Thrill of the Chase
by NebulousMistress
Summary: Follows The Hero's Villain. Multiple stories left to tell. Multiple ways to tell them.
1. New Levels of Weird

The vast majority of my spare time for the next two to three months is being spent in research. And in writing. I need to write a paper (or two) for publication. I say 'or two' because if my favored topic on the spectroscopic study of exoplanetary atmospheres isn't accepted I'll have to start all over again with a different topic.

Ah, science.

This is multiple stories in one. Jack's story. The story of Danny and Sam and their relationship. Vlad's story. Prefacing each chapter is an excerpt from a scientific reference, relevant to the chapter, that would exist in that world. Some of the references I use even exist in this world. If you're interested in where these references come from (and smart money says you eventually will be) check out the fanfiction journal on my deviantart account. Link is in my profile.

This chapter is rated K+ for weird.

This story is a work of fanfiction. Mostly. I make no money off of this though it is good practice.

-00000-

There are multiple theories about the existence of ghosts and what they represent. Plato postulated that the 'minor gods' were nothing more than divine manifestation of ideas and that these ideas were more real than reality itself. The prevailing theory in the early modern era became that ghosts are the echoes of human evils given consciousness by a particularly violent end (Kramer 1487; Fenton-Nightengale 1705). Modern research has postulated that the majority of ghosts are the obsessive natures of the collective unconscious given form and probably not sentient (Spengler, et al. 1979, 1984). All of the common theories have been tested and all theories have been proven correct at some point or another. As such it has been proposed that all theories are correct for some cases and therefore no theory is correct for all cases (Masters, et al. 1983; Walker 1987). If this is so then the diversity of the ghost dimension cannot be dismissed as fanciful anthropomorphizing of an inhuman realm.

-Tobin's Spirit Guide, 27th ed. 3rd printing

-00000-

Three months.

Three months of worrying, three months of work, three months of burying himself in this project to take his mind off of the traitors in his own family and the unspoken, eternal threat of what one of those traitors might do.

Jack Fenton stood in front of the newly repaired ghost portal. The eerie green swirl hung suspended in the middle, a silent threat laughing at him for what he did to his son, to his best friend...

No. Vlad wasn't his best friend, he was a traitor. And Danny was...

Jack wasn't sure anymore. Danny spent all of his time skipping curfew, avoiding chores, disappearing in the middle of family time... Sure now they knew why. But not why he didn't want to involve them in it. Not why so many of those ghost fights seemed to involve the town getting weird in the middle of the night.

Like the freak storm last month. Ice that wouldn't melt for a day and a half, pink lightning, and an off-season tornado. Weird.

No matter. This was no weirder than the time Danny stole the ecto-suit and the town was overrun with skeletons. Much less weird, really. Nothing Jack had seen since could match the Army of Skeletons level of weird. Not even seeing Vlad transform for the first time was that weird.

There was a soft tap-tap-tap of a finger on glass behind him. Jack turned around to see another weird sight.

A small blob of ectoplasm had been caught crawling out of the portal the day before. It put up a bit of a fight, kept trying to crawl in his ear and suck on his head while he was capturing it. Now it was held safe under a glass bell-jar fortified with a low-power ghost shield. The blob spent all of its time since its capture pressed up against the glass making faces as it tried to gnaw through it. But that wasn't what was weird. No, the weird part was Danny. Danny was tapping on the glass to get the blob's attention and then making faces right back at it. He'd press his face against the glass and puff out his cheeks and hold that pose until the blob mimicked him. Then he'd step back and watch.

"That seems wrong, somehow," Jack mused aloud.

"Hi, Dad," Danny said. "I was just..." He made gestures but didn't try to describe it. The blob in the jar blinked blank red eyes then pressed its amorphous mouth back to the glass and started licking at it.

"It's a ghost," Jack said, gesturing to the blob. "Isn't it... related somehow? To you?"

"This? Nah. It's too tiny to be much of anything." Danny lifted the bell to prove his point. The blob shuddered at the sudden loss of its cage and jumped right at Danny, landing on his head.

Jack had an ecto-gun pulled before he could blink and long before he remembered Danny could take care of himself. Ghostly reflexes had Danny ducking and rolling as the bolt shot right where his head had been. "DAD!" Danny shouted.

Jack looked at the scorch mark on the wall and quickly put the ecto-gun away. Danny stood up from behind the lab bench, blob still firmly attached to his head. "Sorry?" Jack said, trying to salvage the situation. "At least I missed."

Danny glowered. It was ruined by the twitching then the giggling as the blob first discovered Danny's ear and then started to wiggle something into it. Danny grabbed the blob and pulled but merely caused it to stretch as it held fast to his ear and kept burrowing further and further in.

"Are you..." Jack couldn't really do anything but watch as his laughing son wrestled with this ectoplasmic blob as it burrowed into... no... _through_ his head. An appendage best described as a tongue stuck out of Danny's other ear and wiggled. Given the odd faces Danny was making he could clearly feel everything the blob was doing inside his head.

Danny gave up trying to pull the blob from the ear it entered and instead grabbed it by the tongue to pull it _through_ the other ear. The tongue stretched and he could feel the blob being squeezed more and more inside his head. "In one ear..." he said and yanked. There was a sickening **POP** and he held the blob in his hand. "And out the other!" Danny stuck his tongue out at the blob that just tried to eat his head.

The blob responded by climbing up its tongue and engulfing his hand. Danny glared at it and peeled it off before flinging it back into its jar, sealing it inside.

"Hah," Danny sighed, a satisfied sound. "That was fun. See you later, Dad." He went upstairs.

Okay, _that_ was Army of Skeletons level weird.

Jack needed some fudge. And maybe a drink.


	2. Cookies for Science

In a world where the Ghostbusters and the Fentons both find themselves hunting ghosts and publishing theories... Well, let's just say an embarrassing amount of RL interaction among scientists seems to operate on the 'neener neener' principle.

This chapter rated K+ for big words and some low-level possession.

-00000-

A representative sample of ghosts (n=216) shows that on average the semi-sentient, single-emotion vapor, or 'imprint', will represent greater than 95% of all entities in a given area (n=209). The imprint can range in power anywhere from the unexplained cold spot to a full-roaming vapor capable of mimicking complex thought. Imprints generally do not take humanoid form, either because they are not coherent enough to hold one or because the emotion upon which they were based does not allow them to keep a permanent form. Theory suggests an imprint is formed when a human experiences an emotional reaction strong enough to produce changes in the base PKE. Imprints are improperly referred to as true ghosts because the emotional reaction most commonly associated with their creation is death.

Imprints tend to exhibit two basic drives. The first drive is a need to inflict themselves upon the living. This manifests most often as a drive to inflict fear, mostly likely because that is how the human being will instinctively respond. The second drive of the imprint is dependent upon their emotion. All imprints studied have been capable of subtly influencing the emotional states of nearby humans to match the imprint's drive. This creates a feedback loop as the imprint grows in strength when exposed to emotions matching their drive and can therefore influence more emotional states. See Chapter 4: Vigo the Carpathian for details.

-Spengler, et al. _A Survey of Spiritual Energies in the Tri-State Area_. Columbia University Press. 1st ed.

note: in the copy held at the New York Public Library the first half of the second paragraph above is highlighted. A comment in the margin reads "Venkmen you're a hack. Do your goddamned research." The comment is signed 'VM'

-00000-

Danny threw open the lab door, happy that for once he'd been able to go down there and not get exposed to some horrible invention or almost revealed by some device. He swore he was headed up to his room but his feet instead found the fridge and his hands found a half-empty tub of ready-made cookie dough. He grabbed a spoon and plopped down at the kitchen table.

The spoon wasn't necessary. In fact it got in the way and it's not like he could eat it. He tossed the spoon over his shoulder, not caring where it landed, and pulled a big blob of cookie dough out with his bare hands.

Footsteps drew Danny's attention away from sucking cookie dough off of his fingers. "Hi, Mom," he said.

Maddie Fenton was halfway to the lab when she realized what she was seeing. "Danny, that's disgusting," she scolded. "You'll spoil your dinner. Give me that." She reached for the tub of cookie dough.

_Thief!_ Danny clutched the tub close to his chest and growled long and low, like an animal. His eyes glowed green and an icy chill radiated from his body.

"Or not..." Maddie said, backing away. Danny stopped growling and looked affronted before scooping out another glob of cookie dough. Odd that his eyes didn't go back to blue. Maybe he still felt threatened or maybe there was something else... "Danny, were you in the lab today?"

Danny nodded and hummed an affirmative.

"Right." Maddie went down into the lab with an entirely new reason other than dissecting the blob in the jar. "Jack, honey, you down here?" she called.

"Right here, Mads."

Maddie took in the scene around her. The portal was working again, its green glow almost comforting in its familiarity. The blob in the jar was still trying to eat its way out. Half-finished inventions were scattered on benches, unpowered prototypes were awaiting the school year so they could be properly tested with Danny safely away from the house. And there was a brand new scorch mark on the wall. She found Jack halfway in the storage locker in the back of the lab.

"Gotta be some left, there's gotta be, it can't all be gone," Jack mumbled as he searched. "Please tell me we still have some of that sweet honey wine left. You know, the stuff that glows green?"

"We drank the last bottle when we activated the portal the first time." Maddie raised an eyebrow, folded her arms over her chest, and pulled out her 'I'm a mother, you're going to tell me what I want to know' look. "Did you let Danny touch anything in the lab today?"

Jack looked down at his feet and dragged one in circles on the floor. He was in trouble, he just knew it. And it was all Danny's fault for opening the jar and letting the blobby ghost crawl through his head. Who knows what it could have done to his brain? He described what happened.

He didn't expect her to snort, giggle, then burst out laughing. Jack stood there, confused and still weirded out. "Is... everything okay?" he asked slowly.

Maddie pulled her laughter under control. She nodded. "It's fine, it's fine," she said. "Come see what he's doing." She led him upstairs where Danny had finished off the tub of cookie dough and was searching the fridge for something else.

Danny glanced at them with green eyes. "Hi," he said. "Where's the food?"

"Danny, you are under the influence of an imprint," Maddie said.

"What?" he asked. He didn't wait for an answer before he found half of a leftover ham. He licked his lips, tore open the wrapping, and plopped back down at the table.

"Hey, let me have some of that," Jack said, grabbing a fork. He was about to stab the ham with it when Danny growled at him and held the ham close like a treasured possession.

"We'll get you another ham later, honey," Maddie said to placate Jack. "Just right now it's a bad idea to get between Danny and food. Like I said, he's under the influence of an imprint."

"Wazzat?" Danny asked.

Maddie ignored the question, too focused on the discovery. "See, Jack, I told you it's an imprint of gluttony!"

"But gluttony isn't an emotion! You can't have an imprint without an emotion!" Jack argued. He pouted as he watched the ham disappearing down his son's gullet. "I want ham."

"And yet you still polished off three pounds of fudge yesterday after we got the ghost blob out of your hair and into the jar," Maddie said. "You ate it all in five minutes then you had a stomachache for hours. Tell me that isn't gluttony."

"Maybe it's greed," Jack suggested. "Greed's an emotion." He fished something out of his wallet. "Look, Danny, I have shiny green money here!" He waved a couple of bills in front of Danny's face.

Danny looked up from his ham. He sniffed at the bills but they weren't food. They smelled like wallet and pocket-sweat. He wrinkled his nose and brought the ham bone to his mouth so he could tear chunks off with his teeth directly.

"Told you," Maddie said.

Jack humphed and glared at his son.

"Wazzan imprint?" Danny asked, mouth full.

"It's a really strong emotion made form in ectoplasm," Maddie explained, giving him the cliff's notes version. "It crawls around and tries to make people experience that emotion. We think that's an imprint of gluttony down there and Jack said it actually went _through_ your head? Please tell me the lab's surveillance cameras caught that, it sounds absolutely fascinating."

"Mom!"

"Oh it's all right," she said. "It's just an imprint. It couldn't hurt you even if you were just a human."

"I'm not sure it's just an imprint," Jack said. "He's been affected too long."

"Unless..." Maddie thought for a moment. She stared into her son's glowing green eyes and had an idea. "Ectoplasm holds onto emotion very well, that's what imprints _are_. What if imprints affect him differently because he's half ghost? But we'd have seen signs before..." She watched as Danny peeled all of the edible bits off of what had once been five pounds of leftover ham. He looked curiously at her while trying to stick his tongue into the bone. He seemed to be phasing his tongue halfway through the bone, using strategic intangibility to pull all of the marrow out. The control he was displaying over his own intangibility was incredible. It implied he had a mental map of his body complex enough that he was able to turn separate muscle fibers intangible without losing track of where everything fit. And this was the boy who'd been banned from the chemistry lab because of chronic clumsiness...

Maddie jumped to her feet. She began pulling down ingredients. A quick chocolate chip cookie recipe came to mind. She put the ingredients down in front of Danny but just outside his reach. She grinned when his green eyes watched with interest and not a small amount of want. "I know you're hungry," she said sweetly. "I'm going to make cookies. But they're not for you."

Danny gave her a look of utter devastation.

"But!" she said, her grin turning calculating. "If you answer my questions I'll let you have as many as you want. Doesn't that sound good?"

"How many questions?" Danny asked. He licked his lips. There were things he really didn't want her to know but... cookies... And he was so hungry...

"You have to answer **all** my questions," Maddie said as she measured out the dry goods. "Every. Single. One. Or you don't get any cookies."

Danny whined, long and loud. He nodded.

Maddie had to suppress a squee of triumph. Instead she tossed the wet ingredients into the mixing bowl and started to really make cookies. She was going to milk this opportunity for all it was worth.


	3. The Two Day Hangover

The reference at the beginning of this chapter begins to tell a story of its own. A double-life led by one Vlad Masters: the budding multimillionaire beginning to build an empire and the frightened scientist experimenting on himself just so he can publish first in case the hospital ever got hold of him again. There's a backstory here that's best shared through these references.

Interestingly: every single reference cited by the paper excerpt below is real except one.

This chapter is suitable for all audiences. It contains mild DxS.

-00000-

Perhaps the most interesting breed of ghost is the individual. A particularly powerful or unexpected death can sometimes result in a ghost that is a full copy of the living mind it sprang from. This is the breed that is most likely to insist they are, in fact, not dead. Occasionally they may be at least partially correct. There are reported cases of ghosts, known locally as loa, inhabiting 'dead' bodies with such skill that the body retains physical function including respiration and pulse (Hurston 1942).

What makes this breed interesting is not its insistence that they are not dead. Nor is it their ability to possess the unwary; any ghost of sufficient power is capable of possessing a body, living or dead. It is their physical structure. The individual is the only breed of ghost known to have an elemental core. The source of their power, the core is at its simplest the structure that grants the ghost tangibility and physical form. The known core types seem to involve variations of the four elements of phlogiston theory: earth, air, fire, and water (Priestley 1774) and a fifth element best described as Force (Tesla 1925). Known variations include Ice, Sulfur, Flame, Gas, and Magnetism. It has been theorized that core variations may also include Steam, Electricity (Tesla 1885), and even Radiation (Anonymous 1899).

-Masters, V. **Variation and Specialization in the Ghost Zone**. _Journal of Paranormal Theory_, 1987.

-00000-

The table was hard and slightly oily against his forehead. The linoleum under his butt creaked as a tray was put next to him. One blue eye glanced at the tray and its contents before groaning and looking away.

"Oh suck it up, Danny," mocked the new voice. Danny gave Sam a scathing look and scootched over.

The Nasty Burger was busier than normal. It may have been because it was summer and the teenaged crowd was out of school. Or maybe because football practice didn't start for a week and the team was taking as much advantage of their goof-off time as possible.

Or maybe it had something to do with the fact that everyone seemed to be watching Danny out of the corner of their eyes. He sighed and ignored them, choosing instead to take a sip of the soda he'd been nursing for almost an hour.

"You gonna eat something other than soda?" Sam asked.

Danny gave her an are-you-kidding look. The soda was comfortingly bland, a small amount of lemon-lime watered down by half a dozen trips to the ice machine. Speaking of, Danny glared at the thoroughly liquid contents of his glass and drifted up to the ice machine. The room went quiet as stares turned blatant.

It was a talent he was trying to cultivate. Being able to keep full control of all his ghost powers in human form would come in handy if ever he was in a situation like Vlad's. And while being exiled into space after trying to take over the world was a laughably remote possibility that didn't rule out someone trying to do something equally damaging. Danny shook his head and filled his soda with ice. He fished a fistful of ice cubes out of the glass and crunched them between his teeth. They didn't melt in his mouth; they only fractured smaller and smaller until they disappeared, fading into his ghost form to make him shudder and sigh. He was feeling better already.

The door to the Nasty Burger was thrown open by an enthusiastic kick. "FREEEEE!" came the shout from the doorway. Tucker didn't seem to care one iota that no one looked at his glorious entrance. He ran over to the counter, arms held over his head as though he was making a triumphant lap of victory.

Danny ate another handful of ice and topped off his soda with even more ice. "Hi Tucker," he said. He drifted back to their booth and pulled something out of his backpack.

As soon as Tucker's order was placed and paid for he stood in the center of the room for his own transformation. At the moment he was trapped within a pale pink dress shirt, an expertly tied red tie, black slacks with shiny black shoes, and a pitifully bare head. He began the change by untying his tie and stuffing it unceremoniously into a pocket. Next he pulled the perfectly-tucked-in shirt out of his waistband and unbuttoned it. He left it hanging open to reveal a yellow t-shirt with a pizzeria logo over the chest. Then he rolled up the cuffs of his shirt to his elbows. Finally the transformation was complete as he took the red beanie Danny offered him and draped it lovingly over his head. Tucker sighed in relief. It wasn't quite cargo pants and combat boots but it was enough that he felt like himself again.

"Order up, Foley." The kid behind the counter passed over a tray piled high.

Tucker grinned and brought his food to the usual booth. He sprawled out on the linoleum seats as though he'd been stuffed into a civilized little chair all day. Which he probably had. "Is he still not eating?" he asked, thumb pointed at Danny.

Danny picked up his soda and sucked loudly through the straw. The slurping noise somehow conveyed his sarcasm better than his expression.

"That's not food," Sam said.

Tucker waved a Mighty Meaty burger under Danny's nose. "This is food, Danny," he said.

Danny went pale and cringed away from the burger like it were poisoned. "Just... no," he said. "Not yet. It's only been two days. At least I can smell food now and not be sick. Yesterday I couldn't even walk in here, remember?"

"It's been two days since you last ate, dude," Tucker said. "You tryin' to starve yourself or something?"

"I ate a pound of cookie dough, half a ham, six dozen cookies, a large pizza-"

"-and two hard boiled eggs," Tucker said, butting in.

"My point is I'm not going to starve," Danny said. "And you, Tucker, are spending too much time with Vlad. Why did he offer you that internship anyway? Heck, why did you take it?"

"Because I liked being mayor," Tucker admitted. He sat up and tried to look important. The impression was ruined by the rumpled beanie and the pizzeria logo on his t-shirt. "But I want to get there the right way. And running away from a press conference is going to haunt me in the future if I don't try to do something to fix it now. Like working with Vlad."

"Yeah but he's creepy," Sam said.

"He is very creepy," Tucker agreed. He and Danny nodded in a synchronized grand gesture. Danny then ruined it by chomping down a handful of ice.

"And you're not much better," Sam accused, glaring at him.

Danny blushed and attempted to look cute and innocent. From Sam's continued glare he figured it wasn't working and wrapped his arms around her waist. "And that's why you like me," he said before pressing his lips to hers.

"Get a room, guys," Tucker said. It was muffled by the mouthful of hamburger as he chewed loudly.

Danny had the misfortune to look at Tucker as he ate. A wave of nausea swept over him and he flew out the window, going ghost just as he phased through the glass.

Tucker swallowed. "What?"

"If that doesn't convince you you're gross I don't know what will," Sam said, deadpanned.

-00000-

Danny flew up into the sky. The wind rushing in his face calmed his rebellious stomach, made him forget the terrible truth of food and digestion. He closed his eyes against the onslaught of the glaring sun and just flew until he felt cold and wet. He opened his eyes.

Amity Park loomed in the distance, bright and foreboding. The river stretched from one horizon to the other in a long meandering line. Lake Eerie sat dark and brooding below him. And then it all disappeared, replaced with a soft gray-white. Clouds were forming over the lake, their fluffy chill embracing him. Danny spread his arms and floated among them. He closed his eyes and just let himself be. The sounds of wind and birds faded leaving him alone, cocooned in drifting wisps of vapor that seemed drawn to his presence. He felt safe here. The world slowed, slowed, stopped.

The next thing he knew was a sudden drop. Danny looked up frantically at human hands and a receding sky. It took a moment before he realized what must have happened and quickly went ghost, stopping the free-fall before he hit the water. He was awake now. Very awake. Holy cow, there had to be a way to fall asleep without shifting to human form. He giggled, hysterical giggles as adrenaline wore off.

Now that he was okay he realized he was kind of stiff. He could hear faint cracking as he moved, like a thin sheet of glass shattering. He shook himself off and saw the glitter of ice shards falling all around him.

That was weird. He'd never woken up covered in ice before. And wasn't ice supposed to be cold?

As he flew home small flakes of blueish-white drifted down over the water.


	4. An Ancient and Venerable Tradition

'Psychical' is a word. And it's used correctly here. That fact hurts me too. I found out while I was Doing The Research for the two references here. Yep, you get two. It's the first volleys in the feud between Masters and Venkmen. It starts as a feud between Masters and the Ghostbusters but over time... Well... Heh heh heh...

This chapter is where this story begins to earn its rating.

-00000-

Despite theoretical work to the contrary (Masters 1987), no evidence has been found that ghosts can be separated into multiple species. Rather all ghosts can be considered variations of a single class of phenomena. It is a fallacy to grant ghosts the qualities normally associated with life forms. It is the same fallacy that considers fire, a chemical reaction, to be alive for no reason other than it fits the logical requirements for life (birth, growth, reproduction, death).

For the sake of study, ghosts can be placed on a spectrum based on their power level (Spengler 1986). On the weaker edge of this spectrum is the imprint. Basic psychological imprints represent the vast majority of spectral phenomena in a given area. Above the imprint is the common vapor and the myriad of forms it takes. Next is the revenant, known by some researchers as the 'individual' (Masters 1987). Highest on the spectrum are those ghosts powerful enough to have been mistaken as gods in previous eras. Gozer the Gozerian (Spengler, et al. 1984) and Technus the Master of Technology (Masters 1988) are known examples.

-Spengler, et al. **Variation of Spectral Power Levels**. _Journal of Psychical Research_. 1989.

So rather than add legitimacy to our mutual field of study by accepting the concept of speciation in the Ghost Zone you've decided to insult my work in the public forum. Fine. Where's your data, Ghostbusters? Or are you too busy imprisoning individuals, sorry, 'revenants' for the crime of existing to collect data on them? Two can play at this game. And unlike others I might name, I have the data to back my conclusions.

And Technus is nowhere near the same power level as Gozer. If you'd ever met him you'd realize that.

-Masters, V. _Journal of Psychical Research Letters_. 1989.

-00000-

Madeline Fenton sat in the lab in front of the family computer. A half-eaten plate of cookies and a coffee mug sat next to her. She watched a video on the computer screen, data she was trying to make sense of. She paused it and stared at it. She rubbed her eyes and picked up the mug to take a gulp of... nothing. Empty. Sigh. She plunked the mug down on the desk and debated getting more coffee. But if she did that then people would start bugging her about dinner and she'd get wrapped up in things and she was busy trying to analyze this video. Speaking of... She hit the 'play' button and watched.

_The ghost sat at the kitchen table. His bright green eyes were glazed over with hunger and madness. They darted around the kitchen like the eyes of a cornered animal. His hands twitched periodically and he kept baring his teeth at something no one else could see._

"_Danny, answer the question." Maddie's voice came from behind the camera. There was the distinct sound of a spoon scraping through a bowl. _

_The ghost's eyes focused on the camera and the voice behind it. One eye twitched and then his face stretched into a disturbed grin. His hands splayed out on the table and he drew himself up, climbing onto the table on all fours. His eyes changed, glowed brighter and predatory, and he hissed long and loud like a snake. The ghost was stalking his prey._

_A black-gloved hand bearing a large spoon covered in cookie dough extended from behind the camera. The ghost stopped stalking Maddie and focused on the spoon. He snatched the spoon violently away from the gloved hand and bit down on it, teeth denting the metal. He sat on the table, eyes closed in pleasure as he hummed with the spoon in his mouth._

Maddie paused the video. She scrolled back to the scene where Danny was crouched on the kitchen table like a tiger ready to pounce. Amazing that a mere imprint could do so much. She looked at the blob still in the jar. Ever since Danny's exposure she'd been too busy with that data to even think about dissecting it.

Maybe it was an overly powerful imprint or something. But that would put the whole concept of ghosts as a single class of entities into question, maybe throwing the idea completely out the window. The idea of speciation never sat well with her, made them seem too much like living, sentient beings. She didn't like hurting sentient beings. And ghosts couldn't be sentient. The only reason Danny was still sentient was because he was still somewhat human, right? Same with Vlad, although he was showing degradation of his sentience in the form of his obsession with her. A mere human wouldn't hold an obsession like that, right?

She needed more data. Data on Danny, maybe even data on Vlad. But she didn't have access to Vlad or the will to experiment on Danny like that. But she did have... She looked at the reflection on the computer screen, the reflection of a glass bell-jar and the green blob still imprisoned within. She could get data on that, maybe even data on it's affect on a human. Sure there was Jack and his three pounds of fudge but they hadn't thought to actually record anything...

The lab door creaked open. Footsteps. She didn't even bother to see who it was. Maddie held out her empty mug behind her, a silent command for Jack to get her more.

"Um... Mom?"

That wasn't Jack. Maddie spun her chair around. So alike and yet the contrast was striking. The creature who's image crouched frozen on her computer screen looked so much like the sixteen year old boy standing at the foot of the stairs. The same wild black hair, the same rumpled clothing, the same pale skin. But these eyes were blue, sane, coherent, questioning, and more than a little nervous. The face was schooled to a careful neutrality.

"So you really **can** make it home before curfew," Maddie said. She could tell his eyes were fixated on the image of the creature.

Danny blushed. Guilt crept out, shattering that neutrality. "Actually, I'm not," he admitted.

Maddie looked confused then took a glance at the clock. Wow, it was hours later than she'd thought. "Well, that's okay, I guess," she dismissed. "I forgot the time, too. Have you eaten? Probably not. Just make something if you're hungry." She thought for a moment then glanced at the blob in the jar. "How much pizza's left in the fridge?"

"Like three whole pies," Danny said. "Why'd you order five pizzas anyway?"

Maddie gave him a deadpanned look.

Danny blushed and trudged up the stairs. She distinctly heard him muttering something about 'unable to control myself', 'not my fault' and 'never gonna hear the end of this'.

As soon as he was out of the lab she got up and stretched. She went over to the bell-jar. The blob pressed its mouth against the glass and opened wide, blowing grotesque bubbles out of its own ectoplasm.

Self-experimentation was an ancient and venerable tradition among scientists. She wondered what that sucking mouth would feel like as it wrapped around her head and wormed its slimy tongue into her brain. Would it hurt? Would she feel anything at all? She lifted the glass bell and looked into the imprint's blank red eyes. It moved and she twitched and then...

Everything went green.

-00000-

Danny sighed and closed the refrigerator door. To be honest he was getting a little hungry but didn't think he could stomach anything substantial. Maybe some soup?

The door to the lab was thrown open. Danny glanced over then did a double-take. It was his mother but...

Maddie's hair was wild and curly, like she'd wrestled with something and lost. Her violet eyes were tinged red around the edges. There was a slight green pallor to her skin. She was taking heaving breaths and looked around the room like she was hunting for something...

Danny knew that look. But the last time he saw it had been an image on a computer screen. "Mom, what the hell!" he demanded.

"Danny!" she cried, ecstatic. "Grab the pizzas, all of them! And you can work a video camera, right? Come down to the lab with me and make sure I don't leave it!"

Danny made several attempts to voice a rant but it died on his lips every time. Instead he stood there gesturing with various angry looks on his face. Finally the rant died and he deflated with a sigh. He grabbed the pizzas from the fridge and followed his mother down into the lab.

Maddie set up the camera and began talking to it, her voice excited, loud, slightly insane, and very fast.

"I need a control for any of the data gathered on Danny Phantom to have real meaning," she said. "I exposed myself to the very same imprint not three minutes ago. Oh god, that was weird. I could feel it crawling into my brain and through my thoughts. I'm still not even sure these are all my thoughts. I am so incredibly hungry. I can actually feel the imprint's influence developing to the peak it's going to reach. It feels like there's a gaping hole where my digestive organs used to be and I'm going to implode if I don't eat something. It's... actively painful. Danny..." She gave him a look, her eyes narrowing. He gulped and handed her a slice of pizza.

She tore into it like it was the most delicious thing she'd ever tasted. When it was gone she fell to her knees on the lab floor. With a glance she got Danny to adjust the camera. "Eating makes the pain go away. For one blissful moment it all goes away and I feel so much better and it tastes so good... But the moment I stop eating... This isn't a natural hunger. If it was there'd be some lead-time. There'd be a recovery period between when I eat something and when it starts to hurt again. There is no such recovery period. As soon as the food's gone the pain is right back to the level it was..."

Danny sauntered over to his mother, pizzas held in his arms. She looked up at him and then her eyes focused on the pizza boxes. She could _smell_ it... A whine ripped out of her throat before she knew what was happening. He looked at her and a thought hit his mind. A little payback... He smiled.

"I'll give these to you if you tell me why you did this to yourself," Danny said.

She reached up for them. He held them above his head. She dove for his legs but he just went intangible. She sat on her knees and growled at him. Something in her wanted to rip him apart, something that was slowly beginning to win.

Danny reached into a box and pulled out a slice. He dropped it, knowing it would never reach the floor. "Tell me why," he said.

Maddie caught the slice almost as soon as it left her son's hand. With the first bite she came back to herself. She'd been wrong. This wasn't an imprint of gluttony. No, this was pure and simple hunger. Someone, somewhere had died of hunger and left behind this imprint. "I... needed to know..." she gasped. "I needed... a control group. I wanted to know... what it's..." She fell quiet and wrapped her arms around her midsection.

"You wanted to know what it's like," Danny realized. He didn't wait for an answer. He wasn't sure he'd get one. He put the boxes on the floor next to his mother and backed away.

Trapped again under the glass bell-jar, the imprint watched with interest as the ghost hunter gave herself freely to its influence and dove on the pizza boxes like a starving woman. Danny couldn't be sure but it looked bigger than it used to be. It blew bubbles against the glass and wiggled as its eyes darted between mother and son.

Danny's stomach growled.


	5. Ice Blocked

One of the side effects of starting a feud with an unknown upstart: now people know who the upstart is. After the Ghostbusters started picking fights with him Vlad found that more journals were willing to read his stuff. However there is a downside to the exposure - it means he has to be more careful now. He can't let anyone figure out that he's experimenting on himself...

Also of note. I don't see DannyxSam being nearly as successful as most people seem to think they'd be. So while this story does have a background of DxS, and while that background flies into the foreground here, it is not the focus. Not by a long shot. It's merely one story of many left to tell.

This chapter is rated T for fooling around.

-00000-

The first lightning strike initiated the core flare. The ghost was observed facilitating subsequent lightning strikes by reaching up toward the storm. Each strike seemed to represent separate peaks of activity within a single flare, suggesting the core flare phenomenon is a complex one. Considerable involuntary action was recorded affecting the ghost during the flare including vocalizations and physical arousal. While no equipment was available to record elemental activity in the vicinity of the ghost during the core flare, after the flare the ghost involuntarily produced a charge of several hundred volts for multiple hours. With concentration the ghost was able to direct this involuntary charge through induction to do work in completed circuits with a maximum resistance of 10 ohms. Despite observations of conscious control the charge must still be classified as 'involuntary' as the ghost was unable to suppress it until after it was naturally depleted.

Subsequent analysis showed the core flare to be largely accidental in origin. Figure 4 shows the power extinction curve of this particular ghost's charge following a similar core flare. Further experimentation is necessary to determine if the flare destabilized the storm's electrical charge enough to cause lightning strikes. If so this would represent the first time an individual was recorded affecting regional weather patterns.

-Masters, V. **Observational Analysis of the Electrical Core**. _Journal of Psychical Research, _1990.

-00000-

Danny opened the door to the Nasty Burger and gestured inside. Sam giggled at her boyfriend's attempt at being gentlemanly. "You take me to all the nicest places," she teased.

"What's wrong with dinner and a movie?" Danny asked.

Sam looked at her watch with a grand gesture. "You mean a matinee and a snack. I had more than enough popcorn."

"I thought you liked 'Dead Teacher 7'," Danny chided. He laughed as he received a punch on the arm for his trouble. The date was going well. "You find us a booth, I'll get the food."

Sam kissed Danny, breaking off and grimacing as the jeering shouts reminded them that they had the entire restaurant as an audience. Danny blushed and Sam smiled mischievously. "We can continue this later," she whispered. "My parents are out of town."

Danny grinned and let his eyes flash green as he held her. He kissed her again, ignoring their audience. A shout of 'get a room!' echoed from across the Nasty Burger. Wait... They knew that shout...

Sam pulled away from Danny and hunted down that voice. Tucker had a whole booth to himself, an impressive feat in the crowded burger joint. "I thought you were busy today," she accused.

"I am," Tucker said. "I've got an hour and then the fruitloop is sending Amanda to retrieve me."

"He let you go?" Sam asked. Tucker did indeed look like he was still playing the part of mayoral intern. The dress shirt, light blue today, was still expertly tucked in, the red tie tightened. His head looked pitiful without its beanie and his front was nearly cocooned in napkins to catch any drips. "What did you do?"

"Media's getting annoying," Tucker admitted. "He says I handled it so well I'm allowed a lunch break now. He says he might even start paying me."

Sam's jaw dropped. "What did you **do**?"

"He got tired of the phone calls so he agreed to one national interview and told me to handle it. So I booked him on The Daily Show."

Sam started laughing.

"What's this about The Daily Show?" Danny asked. He carried a tray laden with a salad, a soda, a milkshake, and...

"You're feeling better," Tucker commented. Danny had actual food in his possession and not just food for Sam. She didn't eat hamburgers or french fries. Or milkshakes, for that matter.

"Tucker booked Vlad on comedy news," Sam said, still laughing. She scootched over so Danny could sit next to her.

"Uh oh..." Danny said.

"No, it's good," Tucker assured. "Vlad says I've got great instincts for this. He wants to try me as a media liaison or something. Literally he said 'or something' then did that dismissive hand-wave thing he does." Tucker thought for a moment. "That's good, right? Tell me this is a good thing."

"Well, he hasn't zapped you yet," Sam said. She turned to her salad and missed the embarrassed look on Tucker's face. Danny didn't miss it despite being busy with a pile of french fries. He gave Tucker a pitying look and didn't say anything. Neither of them wanted or needed Sam going off on things. Besides, Danny and Tucker had the theory that Vlad zapped things without realizing it. It would explain City Hall's light bulb budget.

Tucker's phone buzzed. "Oops," he said. "I'll be late. And then I will get zapped." He grabbed the remaining half of his burger and shoved it in his mouth.

"Tucker!" Sam scolded. "That's gross!"

Danny glanced over and shrugged. He remembered that he should be grossed out but he couldn't conjure up any emotion other than vague interest. He waved as Tucker ran off into the parking lot where his former aide stood next to her car, foot tapping.

Sam shoved her salad across the table. "Ugh. I'm not hungry anymore."

Danny wrapped his arms around her waist. "Did you want me to take you home?" he asked, leaning in close. His cold breath ghosted across her ear.

Sam turned in her boyfriend's embrace and kissed him. "Just don't make the mirror ice over this time," she warned.

"I won't."

Sam pulled out of Danny's arms, feeling an icy chill as she moved through them. She grabbed his hand and led him out of the Nasty Burger.

-00000-

Her parents were gone for the next few days. Her grandmother was nowhere to be found. There was nothing the two teens were supposed to do, nothing to get in the way of their fooling around.

Danny and Sam laid on the black lace comforter of her bed. Their arms were wrapped around each other, hands slipping under clothes to get the feel for bare skin. Icy cold hands roamed across soft skin that seared hot in comparison. She hissed at the shock, the cold biting into her back. She reached behind and pulled his hands out from under her shirt.

She gave him a glare.

"Sorry," Danny said. He blushed sheepishly and went back to trying to kiss her. The hand shoving his face away was unexpected. He allowed himself to be shoved out of her arms. "What is it?"

Sam got up and stormed across her room to her closet. She gave him a glare for good measure and with a grand gesture got out a parka and put it on. "You said you wouldn't do this!" she snapped.

"I'm sorry," Danny said. Every time they tried to get to second base his ghost powers would start to flare. He wasn't sure why it happened, only that no matter how hard he tried he couldn't stop it. Every time ended like this, with frost forming on the mirror and Sam huddled in a parka as far from him as she could. It didn't matter that they'd kept the window open, it didn't matter that stiflingly hot air was drifting in on the summer breeze. It was still cold enough in Sam's room for the mirror to ice over and their breath to steam in white puffs.

He didn't know what the problem was or how to stop it. Heck, he wasn't sure he wanted to stop it.

Sam shivered, teeth chattering despite the parka. It was like Danny was somehow sucking all the heat out of not just the room but her as well. She couldn't stay in here.

"Wait, where are you going?" Danny asked.

"Somewhere warm," she said, her hand on the doorknob. "Just... Danny, either you deal with this or we can't be together."

"What?"

"You heard me. If every time we make out it's gonna feel like an ice bath then I can't be your girlfriend. I really like you, Danny. But... On a good day it's like making out with a corpse. I'm goth but I'm not that goth. Please find a way to deal with this." She left.

Danny sat on Sam's bed, alone. He couldn't believe she was willing to dump him over something he couldn't even control. And he wasn't that cold, was he?

The mirror was frosted over, beautiful patterns of ice crystals spreading in intricate fronds. The houseplant by the window was curled in on itself, purple flowers shining with frost. Small icicles were forming on the struts of the black lace canopy.

Her room was going to be a mess when this all melted.

And yet he wasn't cold.


	6. Entropy in Open Systems

The first half of the story portion of this chapter was written while I was in the aura-laden delirious throes of a migraine. Like Lovecraft and his dreams I found the results creepy and overly verbose but editable into decency.

You get two sources here. Much of the first paper was written in what sounds like Ray's voice. You can tell how good Vlad's theories are by how often this paper references Vlad's works as definitive. The second one, well... Vlad's got an **ego** on him. This is the first event in the feud that leads the majority of the Ghostbusters to throw up their hands and say 'eh, let the upstart get killed' while Venkmen begins to feud in earnest.

This chapter is rated T for Danny trying to shock his mother. This chapter also has some decently heavy Jack/Maddie.

-00000-

The revenant's elemental core represents possibly the most deadly power that any ghost is capable of wielding. This core is the reason why the revenant cannot merely subsist on psychokinetic energy as do all other ghosts (Spengler, et al. 1984). Instead the revenant must periodically surround itself with its own element or else it begins wasting away as its energy slowly bleeds out into its surroundings. In essence it starves. The speed at which this bleeding occurs is dependent upon the strength of the core, the will of the revenant, and the laws of thermodynamics (Masters 1987).

Aside from this bleed a core will also interact with the outside world through the flare. A core flare can occur when a revenant is overwhelmed by emotion or its own power, or has simply glutted itself on its element and is essentially vomiting the excess. The power of the flare will spread unchecked, stripping all control away from the ghost. In particularly powerful flares it may even alter reality on a local level (Masters 1990). Long-term exposure to a revenant is often fatal for this reason (Grimassi 1981).

Core variations can be determine through observation or through calculation. Variants such as Steam, Radiation, Electricity, and Entropy were initially determined through calculation because of the inherent foolish danger in studying such unstable cores. Observation of these dangerous cores should not be considered more important than the safety of the researcher; to place data collection over the life of the scientist is insanity.

-Spengler, et al. **Elemental Cores and the Second Law**. _Journal of Psychical Research_. 1991.

Calculation is useful but cannot replace observation. Calculation requires accurate theory upon which to build a base. Accurate theory requires observation. The amount of actual observation of the so-called "safe" individual, sorry, "revenant" cores is so appallingly dismal that your best theories couldn't even account for half of the observations made on a single electrical core. If safety were paramount in science would we have ever shoveled coal into a steam engine or would a single boiler explosion have dashed all hopes of ever progressing past the horse and rider? Would we ever have made an attempt to understand the logic and science behind death and undeath or would we continue cowering in fear of the dark because we were afraid?

Your concern for my safety is noted and dismissed.

-Masters, V. _Journal of Psychical Research Letters_. 1991.

-00000-

Even when almost empty the lab thrummed with a power all its own. The naked singularity of the ghost portal lent a low pulse, almost a rushing sound at the far edge of consciousness. Maddie could remember when it unnerved her. Now she couldn't imagine her lab without that low thrum and the rush of air molecules as they slipped one by one through the vortex to parts unknown.

The fact that it was no longer unnerving should itself have disturbed her. As far as their instruments could detect the air lost was not being replaced with an equal amount of ectoplasm. This led to some intriguing possibilities. Maybe other portals between the two dimensions were circulating molecules as well making this portal just one intake to a giant heat pump. Or maybe this portal would continue slowly leaching air out of the room, possibly managing to produce a localized vacuum if allowed to stay open long enough in an enclosed space. Perhaps the Ghost Zone was simply lower pressure than Earth's atmosphere. A multitude of possibilities.

Maddie would have to ask Danny about it. Maybe he knew of some portals with a net outflow of pressure.

_Or you could go yourself_.

She nodded. Or she could go herself. It wouldn't be hard. The Mark 5 was almost completed.

_You don't need the Specter Speeder._

That's true. The oxygen mask and jetpack that Phantom used in space were of FentonWorks design. Its original intended use was exploration of the Ghost Zone.

_You don't need the mask._

Wait, what? Where had that come from? Maddie looked around the lab for anything suspicious, anything that might be capable of communicating. The titanium doors to the portal were closed and the ghost shield intact. The ghost sensors all showed the area clear, well, as clear as it could get around these parts. Jack was upstairs; his footsteps echoed on the ceiling. The imprint was still in its jar.

The imprint? Nah... Imprints weren't sentient. Besides, it was still in its jar staring. Just... staring at her. But she couldn't dissect it, not yet. She was still crunching the data from her exposure. It was so unlike Jack's exposure. Maybe the manner or length of time? There had to be something... What was the difference...

The door to the lab opened. "Mads?" Jack called down the stairs. "Honey? It's late, are you coming to bed?"

_It wasn't late, she wasn't tired, she had work to do..._ A multitude of excuses flitted through her mind. She was so engrossed in trying to find the right one that she didn't hear Jack until he had his arms around her from behind. She tensed for a second before recognizing that neon orange and relaxing into his embrace.

Jack pulled Maddie off of the laboratory stool and guided her up the stairs. "C'mon, let's get you to bed," Jack said. "Let's get you out of that jumpsuit and we can snuggle and you can tell me all about the discoveries you're making."

"Well..." She glanced back down the stairs to her precious lab. A single set of blank red eyes stared at her before looking away. Suddenly she felt immensely tired. She yawned. "Okay, Jack," she said. "Sleep sounds good."

"And snuggles?"

Maddie nodded and let her head fall against her husband's shoulder. He was so warm... "And snuggles," she said.

-00000-

Morning found Maddie and Jack in the kitchen. She sat at the table with a cup of coffee in her hands and an empty plate in front of her. He manned the stove and its frying pans sizzling with eggs and bacon, a frilly pink apron over his orange jumpsuit. Jack hummed merrily as he cooked.

Last night was a good night. Maddie hadn't protested once he got her out of the lab and he was able to get her to bed and snuggle all he wanted while she fell asleep in his arms. He'd stayed awake half the night just so he could hold her and stroke her hair and whisper sweet nothings to her as he listened to her dream. And this morning he'd convinced her to let him make breakfast for her and then they'd do... something, he wasn't sure yet. It had been a long time since they'd really gone out together and spent the day as a couple.

The front door opened. Odd, Danny was never up this early and Jasmine usually said 'hi'. "Jazz, sweetie, that you?" Jack shouted. The door slammed shut.

"Ghost, 15 feet ahead." The Fenton Finder announced his presence before Danny trudged into the kitchen looking and smelling like he hadn't come home last night. He plopped down at the kitchen table and let his head fall into his arms.

"And where were you last night, young man?" Jack demanded.

"You mean he didn't come home?" Maddie asked. She glared at Danny, resolutely ignoring the fact that she'd been so wrapped up in her work that she hadn't noticed.

"I did," Danny said, voice muffled. "I was on the roof."

"Curfew means inside not 'on the roof'," Jack ranted.

"Sweetie, why were you on the roof all night?" Maddie asked. "Is everything okay?"

Danny mumbled into his arms. Just thinking the words made him depressed and angry again. He couldn't help it when cold started radiating off of him in waves.

"You know you can talk to us about it, whatever it is," Maddie said. She put a hand on his shoulder, ignoring the ache in her knuckles as the cold seeped through.

Danny sighed. He could hear the faint crackling of frost. It was such a pretty sound but he didn't want his face freezing to the table. He sat up and shook the ice out of his hair. Tiny shards like snowflakes melted as soon as they hit the air around him, beading like frigid raindrops. "Sam's gonna dump me," he mumbled.

"Why? What'd you do?" Jack asked with a derisive snort.

"The eggs, Jack," Maddie said. She got the expected reaction as Jack realized he'd burnt the eggs while his attention wandered and the bacon wasn't doing much better. Now that he was occupied... "Sam loves you, Danny," she said. "I'm sure whatever fight you had isn't nearly as bad as you think it is."

Danny snorted.

"What did you fight about?" she asked. "Was it friends? School? Plans for the future?"

"My powers," Danny grumped.

"Ah HA!" Jack crowed. "She doesn't like that you go ghost hunting without her! Well then take her along, problem solved."

Danny glared at his father and stormed out into the living room.

"Danny," Maddie called, following him. She caught him at the base of the stairs before he could stomp up to his room. "What is it, honey?" she asked. "It's not Ghost Envy, is it?"

Danny shook his head. He looked his mother in the eye. "Mom, you know I'm sixteen. You do know what sixteen year old boys who have girlfriends do, right?"

Maddie's eyes went wide. On one hand this was not the situation any mother wanted to be in concerning their teenaged son. On the other hand this was something normal, something that any mother of a teenaged son had the potential of facing. "Sam's not pregnant, is she?"

"What? No!" Danny sighed and rubbed his hands over his face. "Mom, I can assure you Sam is not pregnant. I can assure you this because we haven't been able to even approach second base before my powers start to manifest and suddenly Sam's on the other side of the room in a parka snapping at me because there's frost the mirror again! Sam's going to dump me because she says it's like trying to make out with a corpse! And I can't stop doing it because I don't even know I **am** doing it until she starts yelling at me for it. At this rate you'll never have to worry about me getting a girl pregnant because no girl will go out with me!"

"Oh, honey," Maddie said. She wrapped her arms around her son. The cold knocked the air out of her chest and she started to shiver. "M-maybe this'll pass and you'll learn-n to control it like all of your other powers-s."

Danny let his mother hug him. He let his head fall to her shoulder and sighed before circling his arms around her. Odd, she was trembling. His heart sank as he put the facts together. "I'm doing it now, aren't I?" he asked. "I'm making it cold."

"J-just a little b-bit."

Danny pulled away from her. Maddie's lips were blue from chill and she was shaking like a leaf. Sam was right, it really was like he was sucking the heat right out of things. He sighed and turned away. "I'm going to bed," he announced as he trudged upstairs.

Maddie watched him go, unable to stop shivering. As soon as he was gone she all but ran to the best source of heat she knew. Not that Jack minded when she demanded he put everything down and hold her. Wrapped in her husband's bright orange embrace, she slowly started to feel warm again.


	7. Of Two Evils

The reference in this chapter has nothing to do with it. Rather it's a commentary on what scientists will and will not accept. Because in some newer branches of science (planetary astrophysics, I'm looking at you...) the theory is more important than the actual data collected. If your data doesn't match the theory then it doesn't matter how good that data is you're still wrong.

This is not my strongest chapter. I fully admit that.

Guess who Vlad studied? Come on, guess!

This chapter is rated T for Vlad being creepy.

-00000-

The ghost was a low power individual with a known ice core. This ghost was well aware of its comparative weakness and therefore appeared to have made it a goal to acquire friends. When rejected the ghost would respond violently, using its core to produce a freezing 'breath' to solidify its victim and force a one-sided companionship. This 'breath' appeared to be the ghost's sole attack and was only used when its victim was particularly resistant or belligerent to the ghost's request.

The ghost was lured into the experiment through the promise of friendship. The ghost was put through various temperature extremes to test the strength and stability of its core. Figure 2 plots core temperature versus external temperature. As seen in Figure 2 the core temperature asymptotically approached 273 Kelvin as the external temperature increased up to the experiment's maximum of 373 Kelvin. It is interesting to note that after several sessions spent enduring external temperatures above 330 Kelvin the ghost showed physical distress and would verbally demand a recovery period. The direct implication is that this ghost was experiencing some form of biological stress or pain.

-Masters, V. _Experimental Analysis of the Ice Core_.

Note: this is an excerpt of a rejected draft of a paper written in 1990. It was rejected because the reviewers refused to accept the idea of ghosts feeling pain. The final paper, published in 1991, made no mention of this discovery.

-00000-

Tucker should probably feel guilty. He really should. His friends were in the middle of discovering they really weren't the perfect pair everyone assumed they were. Sam was adding cool hats with black lace veils to her normal ensemble and blasting rock opera at inopportune moments in mourning for 'what could have, no, what **should** have been'. Danny was moping and pouting and swooping down to pick up random people to sit on roofs with him. Neither of his friends were particularly endearing themselves to the locals. And neither of them were willing to talk to the other about it. No, they expected him to act as a go-between.

Which is why Tucker was hiding. Unapologetic, unabashed, blatant hiding.

Lucky for him he had the perfect place to hide and a beautiful excuse. He didn't even mind the tie anymore, not when he had his own desk he could put his feet on, a chair he could lean back in, and the knowledge that he wasn't responsible for anything important.

The elevator dinged. Tucker quickly sat up to look like he wasn't goofing off but no one was there. _False alarm,_ he relaxed and leaned back again.

"Why are **you** here?" asked a sneering voice. It was right behind him.

Two months of being sneaked up on by this man prevented Tucker from jumping. Instead he just swiveled his chair around to face Vlad.

"I don't pay you by the hour," Vlad said.

"You don't pay me at all," Tucker said.

Vlad cocked his head and his blue eye flashed red for a split second. Tucker gave a quick squeak as his chair shocked him. "You're a teenager," Vlad said, continuing as though nothing had happened. " I don't expect you here before the crack of noon. As you are a minor if you're going to be here early then I have to be here early." He glared and leaned down close to the boy, fangs bared. "I don't like being early..."

Tucker gulped.

"Well?"

He was gonna get zapped, he just knew it. And not another one of those piddly little static things, this time there was gonna be _sparks_. "I'm hiding from Sam and Danny," he blurted.

Vlad leaned back, tapping his cane on the floor thoughtfully. A thoroughly unwholesome smile crossed his face. "Trouble in paradise," he mocked, almost purring with twisted glee. "This wouldn't have anything to do with certain complaints I've been hearing? Pedestrians kidnapped from the streets and carried to dizzyingly high rooftops just to talk? Sometimes Phantom doesn't let them down for _hours_..."

"And Sam's dressed in Victorian mourning veils and making people listen to rock opera all day," Tucker said, arms crossed and a pout forming. "Sam keeps saying she'll forgive Danny and go out with him again if he just does what she asked and stops making it cold. Danny keeps trying to get me to talk to her because he says he's trying but he doesn't think it's a problem. Neither of them is willing to budge!"

Vlad's purr devolved into a snort before refining back into a smooth chuckle. "And they're both putting you in the middle. Again. How typical to think solely of themselves and conveniently forget those who only want the best for them..." He slid close to Tucker, close enough to drape an arm around the boy's shoulders. "Once again leaving you alone to clean up their messes while they gallivant around, so absorbed in their own drama that they forget their 'best friend...'"

Tucker was incredibly weirded-out but as much as he hated to admit it... Vlad had a point...

"I know just how you feel," Vlad continued in that soft velvet voice. "I know how it feels to be left all alone... When your two friends pair off behind your back... Abandon you... Especially when you love her too..."

That snapped Tucker out of the spell. He grabbed Vlad's hand and threw it off of his shoulder before giving the man a scathing look. "I don't love Sam," he said. "And even if I did I'm not enough of a self-centered crazed-up fruitloop to do **that** to my best friend."

Vlad's easy seduction hardened immediately into cold steel. A faint metallic 'tink' and a 'pop' preceded the hallway going dim. Steel melted into a resigned annoyance as Vlad stalked off to his office.

Tucker let out the breath he'd been holding. Last time he'd made Vlad this angry his left hand had been tingly for a week. And then he tensed up again as Plasmius swooped out with a heinously large stack of files in his hands. He dumped them all on Tucker's desk. "If you're going to be here all day you might as well get something done," Vlad said. "And call maintenance about the lights." He flew off, cape flicking dramatically.

Tucker glared at the stack of work. It looked like every damn thing the mayor was supposed to sign off on this week was now sitting on his desk, taunting him. "Aww, man," he whined to no one.

-00000-

Plasmius poured himself a cup of coffee and fixed it just right with lots of honey. He took a sip but it was cold. He glared at the machine but its little blinking light claimed the coffee was fresh and hot. Fine. He wrapped his hands around the mug and _pushed_. Sweetened coffee boiled in his hands as the lights flickered ominously. Satisfied, he took a sip of the still-bubbling liquid.

He shifted back to human form and plopped down in his official chair. Masters reached down to finger the grounding wire attached to it and sighed in relief as the tension in his chest arced down his arm to leave his body via copper wire.

So it was time. Daniel was trying to shed his childish persona and attain adulthood through the usual way. Vlad wasn't surprised; the boy was sixteen. Almost seventeen. It stood to reason that he would try something like this. And of course his ghost half would rear its inhuman head and ruin the whole thing. Vlad was well-versed with this type of situation. He also knew what was likely to happen if the two of them were naive enough to press on regardless.

Daniel was certainly stubborn enough but the Manson girl... wait... nah. He chuckled to himself and sipped boiling coffee. "She's friends with him," he said to the empty room. "Of course she has no sense of self-preservation." But it did seem that perhaps she was smart enough to recognize Death as she stuck her tongue down his throat.

Vlad contemplated interfering. And then had to put his mug down before he spilled it all over himself as he was laughing so hard. Interfering? Only if he wanted to get the girl killed. _Although..._ He seriously contemplated that. He could live without the Manson girl's petty little insurrections, her do-gooder influence on Daniel, and her parent's insistence that their little 'Sammykins' be given free reign to work the rebellion out of her system so she could rejoin high society as their 'pink cupcake'. On the other hand the Mansons were wealthy enough to ruin Daniel for what they would perceive as his failure. They may force him to hide in the Ghost Zone or maybe even seek out Vlad's protection. Vlad made a very satisfied noise at that idea, a noise he would insist sounded nothing like a squeal.

Options... choices... decisions, decisions...

Vlad had to find out how close their relationship really was and how close they would become. He would observe the situation and then interfere. Unless, of course, Daniel came to him first. Not long ago that was a laughably unlikely possibility but now...

...now he might.


	8. Therapist on the Roof

Shock! A chapter with Jazz as something more than set dressing. Also here there be DxS angst.

In an effort to tease out Vlad's motives (and just plain tease him), Venkmen is flat-out implying that Vlad is sexually attracted to his research subjects. It is the first of many papers in the feud that the other Ghostbusters refuse to put their names on.

This chapter is rated T because of its reference and because ghosts have different, ah, _tastes_ than humans.

-00000-

The seduction of death and unlife is a known phenomenon. From Bram Stoker's seductive Dracula to Anne Rice's anti-hero Lestat the line between living and dead has long been one sought after by fools and romantics. Though it is not as publicly acknowledged ghosts have that same hold over those so inclined. The romanticization of those souls and monsters trapped between this world and what lies beyond is a dangerous phenomenon that has claimed dozens of lives over the centuries (Tobin, 1965).

This seduction is what makes the revenant the most dangerous ghost on the spectrum of psychokinetic power. Imprints and vapors are not complex enough to attract the attention of a human in such a manner (Spengler, et al 1984). Those ghosts above the level of the revenant are no longer human enough for any but the most debased persons to feel attraction to. The revenant itself, with its mostly human guise and its natural taboo power, is the type most capable of seducing a weak-willed researcher away from his work (Stantz 1984). The dangers are multiple and complex. In addition to turning a legitimate researcher into a cultist the revenant is fully capable of outright killing its victim. Revenants react to strong emotion with their inherently unstable elemental cores and can easily kill a human in the throes of passion (Masters 1990).

-Venkmen, P. **Spectrophilia: A Review of its History and Dangers**. _Journal of Psychic Deviancy_. 1991.

-00000-

The full moon hung large and red on the horizon. The night was young and Jasmine Fenton was driving around town looking for her wayward brother. She glowered into the night as she thought that maybe Mom or Dad might be willing to do this instead but noooo. Mom was too busy in the basement studying that damned imprint she just could not be convinced to get rid of. Dad was too busy worried about Mom to do much of anything and besides, he was uncomfortable about anything to do with Danny ever since Vlad came back. And of course his friends were too wrapped up in their own little problems. Sam was moping about this fight she and Danny had. Tucker was hiding behind his internship every waking hour to the point where Jazz had even caught him with an evil smile that sent shivers down her spine as he plotted some sort of event involving the school computer lab.

Jazz pulled into a parking lot near where the rumors said Danny was hiding. And if the rumors were correct then she was going to pound that little brother of hers...

She grabbed her bait, or maybe it would be a bribe, and left her car in the lot. She wandered out onto the street on foot and attempted to look like she wasn't expecting what happened next.

A wave of cold washed over her as she felt arms wrap around her middle and suddenly the ground wasn't there anymore. "Danny!" she snapped.

She glared at her wayward ghost of a brother as he deposited her on the roof of a bakery. At least he had the decency to look ashamed. Jazz really wanted to snap at him for really being responsible for dragging people onto roofs against their will just so he could talk. Instead she took a deep breath and waited for him to open first.

"Sam wants to break up with me," he mumbled. "She hasn't yet, not really, but she will."

"What happened?" Jazz asked. She knew how a therapist would handle this. Let the patient set the pace, let him say what he needed to say, only then can his thoughts and actions be altered to suit the situation.

"I can't control my ghost powers well enough," he said. Danny slumped and stared out over the city. "Every time I feel something really strong I make it cold. And I don't know I'm doing it. Sam's fed up with me because it gets cold every time we try to get to second base. And I mean _really_ cold. Like frost-on-the-mirror cold. And I can't stop it!"

"Does emotionally distancing yourself from the event help?" Jazz asked, her scientist's curiosity piqued.

"Yes, because emotionally distancing myself from my girlfriend is always a good idea," Danny snapped.

"But does it work?"

Danny sighed. He shook his head. "I don't know how," he admitted. "I've always felt things, Jazz. I feel them really strong. Especially since..."

Jazz brought out her bribe. Chow mein, garlic chicken, sweet and sour pork, kung pow chicken, she'd hit the takeout Chinese place hard. She handed Danny a pair of chopsticks and picked out a pint of fried rice for herself. "You're pretty good at working off your aggression when you need to," she said. "How exactly do you do that?"

Danny shrugged. The smells of fattening fried foods and cloyingly spiced sauces lured him into accepting this bribe. He reached for the quart of garlic chicken and sort-of managed to get the chopsticks to work right. "I blast things," he admitted. "It gets cold and I let my powers do what they want to do. I try to do it at night when no one notices. I tend to blast melons the grocery store's thrown away, empty soda cans, the occasional rat, the Box Ghost..."

"And what happens when you can't work off that aggression? How does it affect you?"

"It gets cold," Danny admitted. "I start to feel really hot even though it's cold and it's hard to stay human and I get the urge to do _something _and it just gets worse and worse... Sometimes I can't stop it." He smiled wanly. "It's a good thing it's mostly ghosts that make me mad, huh? That way I don't have to hold it in."

"And what about when you're with Sam?" Jazz asked. "I mean, really _with_ her. Have you tried to hold it all in?"

Danny didn't answer, not with words. He did, however, put his chopsticks down and just glare into the box of food in his hands. The air grew cold.

"It didn't work did it," Jazz realized. "It worked about as well as when you try to hold in your aggression. Or any other emotion."

She could see the frost spreading from where Danny sat, the blush across his cheeks, the way his hands shook, even the glint of an icy tear frozen halfway down his face. "It's nothing to be ashamed of," she whispered as she wrapped her arms around him. The shock of cold nearly tore an interesting array of words from her throat.

"Whenever I feel anything it gets cold," he said, finally realizing what was happening to him and what it all meant. "How can't I be ashamed? How can I love anyone? I-I can never be..." A sob tore its way our of Danny's throat.

Jazz rubbed her brother's back and stroked a hand through his hair. Sometimes it struck her just how inhuman he'd become. She shuddered in the chill and tried not to think of how isolated he must feel or how easily loneliness could drive a person insane. _Like Vlad..._ "You're not alone," she promised. "You'll never be alone. You have friends and family and people who love you no matter what. Talk to Sam, Danny. Tell her what's happening. You might be surprised."

Danny pulled away and wiped his nose on the back of a white glove.

"She's been your friend for a long time. She's been through more at your side than most married couples experience in a lifetime. I don't think she'll leave you, Danny. Not really."

Danny nodded.

Jazz picked up the box of garlic chicken Danny had tossed aside. She stabbed her chopsticks at it and glared when she found it frozen solid. Danny gave her a sheepish look as she checked the rest of the boxes and found it all cold. She sighed and resigned herself to cold Chinese food.

The summer air slowly grew warm again.

-00000-

Danny took a deep breath and remembered his sister's words. She was right; he needed to talk to Sam. He couldn't keep running away from this and he was bound to already be in enough trouble for dragging people onto rooftops without asking.

Sam was in the park sitting under a tree, her back against the trunk. She hid under a black cape, lacy black and purple dress, and a black hat with feathers and a veil. Lace gloves covered her hands but left her fingers bare. Danny knew if he were to get past that veil he'd see her black eyeshadow and lipstick contrasted against the white powder that paled her cheeks.

Strange music blared from the tiny speakers she had hooked up to an iPod. It sounded like the Gregorian chants they'd had to listen to in history class that one year but Sam was Jewish, why would she...

_Everyday we've all been led astray  
It's hard to be lucky in love  
It gets in your eyes  
It's making you cry_

Wait a minute...

_Don't know what to do  
Don't know what to do  
You're looking for love  
Calling heaven above  
Send me an angel  
Send me an angel  
Right now_

Danny sat down next to his girlfriend and asked the question burning foremost in his mind. "Are those really monks singing 'Send me an Angel'?" he asked.

Sam nodded.

"That is so cool."

She sighed and ignored his enthusiasm. Even if it was genuine she didn't want it. Not unless he was willing to... Ugh. One thing, one little thing was all she asked.

Danny leaned back against the tree trunk and stared down the hill at the playground. The silence was uncomfortable and he knew why. "Some ghost powers I'll never be able to control," he said. "I can try and I can work at it and I can train but they won't go away."

"So you're just giving up?" Sam asked. "You're just giving **me** up?"

"No!" Danny turned around to grab her hands. He held them even as she tried to pull them from his grasp. "I don't want to lose you! I don't want to give you up."

"Then learn to control your powers!" she snapped. She yanked them out of his grasp, knowing full well that she was yanking them _through_ him.

"What do you think I've been doing for almost three years?" he demanded. "I can always get rid of them again if you'd rather-" He was cut off by stinging pain as Sam slapped him across the cheek.

"Don't you **dare**," she warned. "The moment you get rid of them again is the moment I leave and don't come back, you hear?"

Danny was shocked as he knelt on the grass and looked, just _looked_ at her. She was very pretty, pale as death with dark shadows around eyes that flashed bright and violet. Black lace accentuated every little nuance of the strength lurking under her skin and in her heart. There was a fire in her that drew him in, that made him want to _purr_ and encase it in ice...

She shivered as a cold wind broke through the summer heat and wrapped around them both. Dammit, he was doing it again! She gathered her stuff and stood up. "I'll always be your friend, Danny, but I can't date you until you stop doing this. Stop making it cold." She walked down the knoll, away.

Danny watched her go. He had the strangest urge to chase after her. Not to bring her back but to make her strike at him again and begin the chase anew. White rings flashed around his waist for a moment before the oddness of that urge struck him hard.

The rings snapped out of sight. _What the hell?_

-00000-

Song credit:

_Send Me an Angel_ by Real Life. The version here is a cover sung by Gregorian monks. I am dead serious and it is awesome.


	9. A New Normal

The second half of the prose of this chapter was the first scene of this story that I wrote. In fact I wrote it not knowing what it went to, when it happened, only that it fit into this AU somewhere. I have eight or ten of these types of scenes, many of which will probably never see the light of day.

This chapter is rated T because Vlad's response to Venkmen's dig about his sexuality was to write about some, ahem, _personal_ experimentation. And because Danny has interesting thoughts when he's trying to fill the silence.

-00000-

Once the core flare was initiated the ghost was observed seeking out the presence of another. The only other present was an individual with a core of Flame. The ghost displayed his intentions by arcing electricity around her and attempting to begin a core cascade wherein his core flare would induce hers to flare without relying on the presence of her native element. She accepted by responding with a show of strength as the two individuals began a fierce and almost ritualized combat. Combat devolved into an animalistic flurry of claws, fangs, and elemental fury as she overpowered him and took what she wanted. Conditions within the experimental chamber measured 724 Kelvin at maximum with an ambient current of greater than 100 amps.

After the cascade was exhausted and the elemental cores depleted she was observed declaring their interaction to be 'a one time fling' and ordered him not to call her. Both individuals took the opportunity to replenish their elemental strength.

-Masters, V. **Interactions Between Elemental Cores**. _Journal of Psychic Deviancy_. 1992.

Who the hell do you think you are, Masters? The Alfred Kinsey of ghosts? Or do you just enjoy watching revenants get it on? I knew you were a freaky kid when I first read your work but really! Most victims of succubi at least have the decency to act ashamed about it.

-Venkmen, P. Personal Correspondence.

I never said I _watch_, Venkmen.

-Masters, V. Personal Correspondence.

-00000-

Three days. Three days at City Hall laboring under the stack of papers foisted off onto him while Vlad lounged in his office watching old movies and laughing his ass off. Tucker had put up with it for three days before he broke and stormed into the mayor's office fully intending to tell Vlad to take this internship and shove it. Instead he found his rants were derailed before they could even begin by Vlad being so goddamned _civil_ and sitting him down to watch some old Marx Brothers movie. What began as an indignant rebellion ended with Tucker sprawled on the floor watching the big TV recessed into the wall, a steak sandwich and jolt cola keeping him company while he found himself giggling at scenes of an old-timey football game with a horse pulling a janitor's cart like a chariot making the game-winning touchdown.

Only after the movie ended and Vlad had given him the rest of the week off and shoved him out the door did Tucker think that maybe something was wrong. He could _smell_ the evil plans being formed somewhere about something, he just didn't know what. He knew someone who might, though.

As he dialed Danny's number he hoped the whole breakup thing had died down somewhat.

"Fenton residence," Danny said as he picked up the phone.

"Yo, Danny, you sound less bummed, you wanna go hang out?"

Danny looked around the house. Jazz was out with her friends, Dad was watching TV, Mom was in the lab... "Hey Dad, I'm gonna go hang out with Tucker," he shouted.

"That's a yes, innit," Tucker said, his tone kept flat for maximum sarcasm.

"No, really," Danny said, returning the sarcasm. He listened to his father shout back something about curfew. "I gotta be home by ten. Whaddaya wanna do?"

"Let's hit the lake," Tucker suggested. "I've been cooped up in this tie for far too long and I need to be as close to naked as possible."

"Oh my..." Danny twisted his voice to sound as scandalized as possible.

"Shut up. I mean swim trunks."

"Yeah, right," Danny said, grinning. His smile faded a bit as he thought of just him and Tucker hanging out. It didn't seem right. "Hey, Tuck? You think you can invite Sam? If I do it won't seem like a 'just friends' thing and, well, it seems wrong..."

Tucker cringed. "You're not still fighting are you?"

Danny shrugged even though his friend couldn't see him over the phone. "I think we've called it off for now. We're just friends." He ignored the warring voices in the back of his mind: the one that wanted to chase after her, the one that wanted to hold her, the one that wasn't sure, and the one that just wanted to know what in heck was going on.

Tucker wasn't sure. On one hand he wanted to stay as far away as possible from that sort of ambiguity. On the other he missed his friends and just hanging out the way they used to before that stupid space rock. "I'll call her but I swear, if the two of you start fighting I'm leaving you there."

"Got it, Tuck," Danny said." Don't worry about it. We'll be fine." He hung up and headed up the stairs to get ready. Or tried to.

"You're just going to the lake?" Jack asked.

Danny stopped in his tracks. His dad looked confused, like he wasn't entirely sure what was going on. Jack was staring at him. "Yeah. With Tucker and Sam. We're gonna go swimming, maybe goof off later." Danny rubbed the back of his neck, suddenly nervous. He wasn't used to being stared at like this, like a test subject who'd just defied theory.

"You're not going to go hunt ghosts or fly around or something weird?"

"Not planning on it," Danny said.

Jack waved his son upstairs. As the boy ran off to go get ready Jack marveled at how..._ normal_ their plans were. Just goofing off like teenagers on summer vacation. No evil villains, no being mayor, no weird powers, no fighting ghosts by turning into one. It was like he had his son back.

Or maybe he'd never lost Danny. Maybe he's always been there.

As Danny ran out the door with his backpack stuffed with things and barely a wave 'goodbye' Jack found himself sighing happily as he switched the TV over to his cartoons. For the first time in months things felt **right.**

-00000-

The hot summer sun blazed overhead. Fluffy clouds drifted in the August sky, waiting for their chance to grow into a thunderstorm. The sounds of splashing and carefree fun drifted across the lake to the secluded cove where Danny, Tucker, and Sam were hiding from the heat and the populace. Tucker sat on the shore in a lawn chair with built-in canopy overhang. He was using the portable shade to keep the glare off of his PDA. Sam hid from the sun under a black cloak, an attempt to cling to her Goth-ness despite the heat, their surroundings, and her light purple bikini. Danny'd given up all pretense and was just laying on his belly in the cool waters of the lake, feet dangling out in deeper waters.

Life was returning to some semblance of normal. Their senior year of high school was less than a month away. Soon there would be college applications to worry about, futures to plan. But until then three friends were glad for the chance to just hang out and let time and thoughts pass them by.

Speaking of thoughts it was too damn quiet. "Why does Vlad chase after my mom anyway?" Danny asked randomly, breaking that quiet.

"Because he's in love with her?" Sam said.

"Because he's a fruitloop?" Tucker countered.

"He is a fruitloop," Danny agreed. He rolled over in the lake and began to float on his back. He lazily reached above his head to grab a weed before he drifted away. _The sky is really pretty today..._ "But other than that. You ever think maybe he chases after her because she's safely unattainable?"

"You mean the chase being more fun than the actual relationship?" Sam asked.

"Something like that," Danny said. His mind kept going over the events of a few days prior. He'd wanted to chase after Sam so bad. Only a split second recognition of how weird it was had stopped him. After all, what kind of healthy person longed to chase after a woman just so she'd hit him? He shook off the thought and instead focused on Vlad.

"What do you mean?" Sam asked.

"Think about it for a second," Danny described. "Single rich guy in his 40s. Probably has women throwing themselves at him. Instead he goes home to a cat. Ignoring that it's Vlad, what does that sound like to you?"

"Sounds like he's gay," Tucker said absently. Then he sat up straight as he realized what he'd just said. "Wait, you think Vlad's gay?"

Danny shrugged.

"Makes sense," Sam admitted. "He's probably so far in the closet he can't see past the feather boas."

There was a splash as Danny snorted with laughter and ended up losing his buoyancy. He popped up out of the water, coughing and spitting. "Somehow I can't see Vlad with feather boas," he said once he got his breathing back.

"The man wears a cravat every day," Sam countered.

"He does get manicures," Danny admitted. He still remembered the mud bath and the incredibly de-masculinizing... _procedures_ he'd put up with afterward and how Vlad just sighed happily and let those people do all of these girly things to them both. Sure it felt good and relaxing at the time but he'd needed days to reassert his masculinity.

"He wears eye make-up," Tucker said.

Sam snorted and turned to fix Tucker with a demented and delighted grin as she tried not to laugh. "Eye make-up?"

"He says he needs it to add definition to his right eye. Yanno, since it's solid red. I didn't call bullshit because I like my limbs attached."

"He's gay," Sam said, convinced. She giggled.

"He might not be," Danny said. "I mean, he was really beat up from his time in space. Maybe he only started the girly stuff after he got back. 'Cause he needed to feel or something."

Sam fixed Danny with a 'you know something' glare.

"I walked in on him in a mud bath," Danny admitted. He shrugged as he stood chest-deep in the lake. "He said either leave or he'd make me join him. I, well..." He blushed. "I didn't leave."

Tucker and Sam gave him nearly identical looks of disturbed disgust.

It took a moment of being stared at for Danny to realize what they were thinking. "No! No, not like that! Ick, guys, no! They stuck me in a completely different mud bath. And invisibility means nobody gets to leer."

Tucker accepted this with a nod. Sam remained unsure.

"So I got stuck in a mud bath, which I add was amazingly civilized, then there was a massage then food and the manicure and then I booked it because I did not want my toenails painted and other people washing my hair is weird. It took me three days to reassert my masculinity."

"Was that when you challenged Dash and his buddies to a no-ghost-powers fight and put them in double jock locks?" Tucker asked.

"And Kwan managed to give me a black eye with his elbow? Yeah, then. Kwan ruined it by trying so hard to make it up to me."

"But Vlad stayed after you left?" Sam asked.

"He looked so disappointed when I left," Danny admitted. "I swear, it was like some creepy, gay, villainy father-son bonding or something."

Tucker snorted.

"Maybe he doesn't know he's gay," Sam said.

"Oh he knows it," Tucker said. "The guy's gettin' his toenails painted and wearing eyeliner. He knows he's gay."

"Maybe I could check," Danny offered.

"What're you going to do, ask?" Sam demanded.

"What else do you think witty banter is for?" Danny countered. He laughed evilly and dropped underwater before popping up nearby.

"So you're seriously going to wait until you guys fight again and then you're going to flat-out ask him if he's gay under the pretense of witty banter?"

"Yeah, why not?"

"I dunno whether to ask you to get a video or if I can have your stuff," Tucker said.

"I'll be fine," Danny said, waving dismissively. "You'll see."


	10. The Daily Show

August 16, 2007. I chose this date based on how I've put together the timeline for this whole AU. Imagine how my sense of irony reacted when I searched the internet for the actual Daily Show from this date and found out the guest was Senator John McCain talking about how he'd rule the wor- I mean run the US presidency.

The Daily Show is owned by Comedy Central and Jon Stewart owns his jokes so very well. Lines in _italics_ are from the episode. Many of them are transcribed from that actual episode compliments of the Daily Show website. Many more I had to write. I tried to keep the proper tone.

In honor of finishing my paper (yay) I give you... no scientific reference at all! Mwahahahaha! References will continue next chapter.

This chapter rated K+.

-00000-

Danny jumped over the last stairs before he hit the floor running. He'd been home on time, he'd been tipped off by Tucker, everything was perfect. Except...

Jack was laying on the couch watching late night science fiction, a bowl of popcorn in his hands. On the TV screen a "giant" preying mantis crawled over a black and white postcard of San Francisco while actors screamed badly. "Dad!" Danny whined.

Jack looked up at his son and offered him the bowl. "Hi, son," he said. "Wanna watch a bad movie with me?"

"But I wanna watch the news," Danny said, pouting.

Jack looked at his son like he'd grown three heads. He stared with such force that Danny found himself checking to make sure. Jack pouted and sullenly flipped the TV to the local news channel.

Danny vaulted the couch. "That isn't news," he said. He grabbed the remote and switched the channel. "Now **this** is news."

Jack's sullen expression lifted a bit. At least this news would be interesting.

"_August 16, 2007. From Comedy Central's news headquarters in New York this is The Daily Show with Jon Stewart."_

Jack passed the bowl of popcorn over to Danny. "I like your taste in news," he said.

Danny took a handful of popcorn and munched it, grinning.

"_Welcome to The Daily Show. My name is Jon Stewart. We have quite a show for you tonight. Vladimir Masters will be joining us later this evening. He is the man who almost ruled the world but instead has to content himself with just a multi-billion dollar international corporate empire." Jon Stewart shrugged his shoulders in a mocking way. "So picky."_

Jack fell back to looking sullen. Why, exactly, did they have to watch this traitor? He'd had enough of Vlad for a lifetime in the shuttle as they orbited the disasteroid. He crossed his arms and pouted. Admittedly the pout broke a bit as the middle-aged man on screen managed to hold a straight face as he started making two dolls kiss in the middle of a report on lead in children's toys. A snort tore his attention over to Danny who was trying to hold in his laughter by clasping his hands over his face and kicking at the air. Jack reached over and slapped his son on the back. A torrent of trapped giggles fell out of Danny.

"_For that we go to John Oliver standing by in what appears to be a local toy store." The live audience cheered, almost drowning out the long joke that was being spun._

"So..." Jack said. He wasn't sure how to say this. "You just happen to want to watch the news, this particular news show, when Vlad's on it."

Danny shrugged and blushed.

"Why?"

Danny watched the TV screen, not really seeing it. It was still showing actual news so he didn't feel like he was missing much. There were so many ways to answer that question, possibilities that careened through his mind. 'I want to see Vlad goofing off for once.' 'I want to gauge the public's reaction now that they know we're half-ghost.' 'I want to see what he'll reveal so I know not to say more than that.' 'I want to know what he says about me.' All of them were true. "Because it's got to be more interesting than real news?" he offered.

Jack gave him a tired-looking glare.

"Because I want to see how people are going to react to us now that they know we're half-ghost, alright?" Danny snapped. He slumped against the arm of the couch, bowl of popcorn balanced on his knees, pout forming on his lips.

"Oh come on, Danny, you know they'll love you," Jack said. He reached over to steal a fistful of popcorn.

Danny shook his head. "People fear what they don't understand," he said. On the screen the news came back from a commercial break.

"_We now turn to the campaign trail as Hilary Clinton remains the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination. Her opponents have increased their efforts to access Senator Clinton's archives from her time spent as First Lady." Stewart's tone turned mocking. "Because, yes, almost nothing is known from that period."_

"But they don't fear you," Jack said, trying to be comforting. His words fell flat on an instinctual level.

"As soon as they forget I saved the world they will fear me. The only way around it is to teach them. To demystify us. To send Vlad on The Daily Show."

"Yeah but Vlad's evil. You're not evil, are you?"

"Of course not!"

"Then how is sending Vlad to scare everybody going to help you?" Jack asked.

Danny shrugged. "I guess we'll just have to see what he does, won't we?"

Jack made a noncommittal grunt. He supposed he could try to think of this as research but he was never one for research. That was Maddie's thing. And Vlad's, he was always good at research, but he didn't count. Not anymore, the traitor.

As soon as the next commercials hit Danny was in the kitchen and Jack was contemplating the remote. He could just switch the TV back to his bad movie and ignore Danny's pleas. He reached into the bowl of popcorn and... wait, why was the popcorn gone? Jack crossed his arms over his chest and sulked as he decided he was just going to pretend Danny wasn't there tonight. Thoughts of traitors filled his head, broken only by the smell of fudge. Wait, fudge? He looked down at a plate of yummy fudge held under his nose. His eyes followed the arm holding it up to a sheepish expression. "I, ah, ate all the popcorn," Danny admitted.

Jack took the plate from his son. His eyes fell back to the fudge. He wondered what, if anything, it meant. His eyes caught the plate Danny held in his hands and the truly impressive sandwich he was trying to figure out the logistics of eating. Jack found Danny's attempts more entertaining than the TV. Unfortunately they ended the moment the news came back on.

"_Welcome back," Stewart said. "My guest tonight, Vlad Masters." The camera panned over to Vlad's entrance amidst applause and cheers. VladCo's corporate logo was portrayed tastefully on the background as Vlad shook hands with Stewart and they both sat down._

Despite being half-ghost, despite needing the cane, Vlad seemed almost subdued. That quality ceased the moment he looked at the camera and Jack felt like he was being pressed back into the couch by the sheer force of personality Vlad was conjuring. He glanced over at Danny who seemed oddly unaffected.

"_So you wanted to rule the world," Stewart began._

"_And I would have gotten away with it too if it hadn't been for that meddling..." Vlad paused. "Rock? Or something..." He gave an easy, predatory grin as he realized Stewart was laughing. "I don't get why people always use the past tense for that statement. So I failed once. A man needs goals. A ghost needs goals all the more."_

Jack's jaw dropped. Danny's jaw hung open as he finally managed to pick up his sandwich but completely forgot about it when faced with the reality of Vlad's words.

"_You say a ghost needs goals all the more," Stewart said. "What do you mean by that?"_

_Vlad sat back and steepled his fingers in front of his face. "When a human finishes everything they set out to do they get depressed and then find something else to do. A ghost who's finished all its goals has no reason to exist. So they stop existing. It's their obsession or their unfinished business or whatever you want to call it that keeps them whole. I have two such goals, both of them... unlikely. Impossible, even. After all, the world knows what I want to do with it. Do you really think they'll let me conquer it now? Even if I kept my campaign promises."_

Danny set his plate down. Vlad had basically just told the world flat-out that he would never succeed in conquering it. By making it one of two obsessions Vlad all but guaranteed himself immortality.

_Vlad took a sip of coffee but made a disappointed face. He wrapped his hands around the mug and his blue eye flared red. The studio's lights flickered and dimmed, the camera fuzzed for a split second before everything was normal again. He took another sip and exhaled steam. Only then did he notice Stewart pressed against the far side of his desk, mouth open, an accusing finger pointed. "The coffee was cold," Vlad said as an explanation._

"_**You** did that!" Stewart shouted. _

_Vlad sighed. "Yes, I did that," he admitted._

"The hell was that?" Jack asked.

"Vlad has electrical powers," Danny said. "Like my ice powers. I've seen him grab lightning out of the sky and wield it like a whip."

"_You managed to boil a cup of coffee using just your hands?" Stewart asked, awed. He slid his chair back over and poked Vlad's coffee mug carefully. It visibly sparked. "What else can you do?"_

_Vlad grinned, fangs glinting in the stage lights._

"You have different powers than he does?" Jack asked. His scientific curiosity was beginning to awaken.

"Well, we both have the basics," Danny said. "Flight, intangibility, ectoplasmic manipulation, things like that. He can make tornadoes and use electricity. I have my Ghostly Wail and ice powers. Those are the powers I know of but to be honest Vlad and I haven't exactly sat down and made checklists of-" Danny couldn't finish his sentence as he was too busy falling off the couch, laughing.

Jack looked over, confused. Even he couldn't stop the blinding grin and the loud guffaws as he saw Vlad holding a lit light bulb between his teeth.

_Vlad took the bulb from his mouth. It lost its glow the moment his teeth no longer touched the bare cap. "I make the most unlikely Uncle Fester, don't you think?" He smirked as his host was too busy laughing to say anything. Vlad instead occupied himself by holding the screw base in various ways to make the filament glow. He had just gotten to holding the sleeve in his fingers and touching the base contact with his tongue when he seemed to realize he was being silly and put the bulb down. He tried to look dignified._

"_Moving on," Stewart said, gasping for air and trying to regain control over his show. "Danny Phantom..."_

"_Ugh, that goody two shoes godson of mine-"_

_Stewart cut him off. "Wait, he's your godson?"_

"_Yes, the naive ghost child who uses his powers for **good** is my legal godson," Vlad said, mocking Danny's ideals to the fullest. "I am fully prepared to declare him my heir. All he has to do is renounce this heroism of his and embrace supervillainy at my side." He turned to look directly into the camera and held up a hand. That hand quickly became engulfed in ectoplasmic energy, lending an eerie pink glow to his evil grin. "I know you're watching, Daniel. Renounce your father and I will teach you everything you need to know." When the audience hissed at him he merely gave an easy smile and soft, dark laughter before reabsorbing the charge._

"Thoroughly evil," Jack grumbled. He tossed a piece of fudge in his mouth and crossed his arms over his chest with a humph.

"He's been giving me that same offer since the reunion," Danny said.

"Why didn't you tell us?" Jack demanded.

"I blackmailed him into not killing you. If he tried then I'd reveal him for what he was."

"Wait, so he never tried to kill me?"

Danny blushed and turned away. He couldn't answer that, not without his dad treating him like a traitor again. His eyes fell on his forgotten sandwich. He used that as an excuse for not answering.

Jack inched away as the room grew cold.

"_In the meantime you're the half-ghost mayor of Amity Park," Stewart said. "The most haunted city in America."_

"_You have to admit that makes sense," Vlad said. He pointed at Stewart like he was commanding him. "Have to."_

"_It does make sense," Stewart admitted. "But how do you get elected like that? I mean, unless more than just living humans can vote there."_

"_You're kidding, right? I have political enemies in Congress right now trying to formally declare me dead so they can strip me of my rights. But, well, let's just say that while I was exiled in space the city council decided the most logical choice for mayor was a sixteen year old boy. Still in high school. For no reason other than he's Phantom's friend. It's not the most logic-driven of towns."_

"_Whatever happened to the kid-mayor? When you came back, I mean."_

_Vlad grinned. "I waited until the stress got to him and then helped him convince the city council that it was in their best interests to return the post to rightfully elected."_

"_You did something, didn't you," Stewart accused. He looked a bit nervous after, as though realizing what he'd just done._

_Vlad's grin grew evil._

"Vlad hired a few ghosts to cause mayhem and get me in trouble so Tucker would give up his post as mayor," Danny said.

"Is that legal?" Jack asked.

"It's not illegal. Believe me, Sam made me look it up."

"_I hired the kid as an intern," Vlad said. He gave a nod to the smattering of applause. "The boy has a great deal of potential but he needs guidance. I figure I'll keep him at least until he goes to college then recommend him to a few acquaintances at the state level. If he's interested, of course. For now he's my very own Pete Ross."_

_Stewart tried hard not to laugh. "You keep comparing yourself to bald guys. First Uncle Fester, now Lex Luthor."_

_Vlad preened regally and ran a hand through his long, unbound hair. "Well, you know, everyone wonders how the other half lives."_

"_And you'd be the one to know, wouldn't you," Stewart accused, laughing._

Danny yawned as they started wrapping up the interview. But he still had his sandwich... Meh. He could eat it later. He headed off to the kitchen and put the sandwich in the fridge. Odd, someone was still in the lab. He came back to the living room and found his dad had switched the channel back to his bad movie just in time to see the end credits.

"Why's Mom still in the lab?" he asked.

Jack shrugged. "I dunno," he said. "She keeps spending more and more time down there. Nothing I say keeps her out of there for long."

Danny shrugged. "You get the same way sometimes when you're inventing something," he said. "I'm going to bed." He trudged up the stairs, needing silence and solitude to process what he'd just seen.

Jack watched the credits give way to an old Star Trek episode. This thing with Maddie bugged him. Maybe Danny was right, maybe it was just the drive of new science, the lure of the machine. But then maybe Jack's gut instinct was right, maybe something was wrong, something just outside his understanding.

On the TV screen a strange space-blob engulfed a shuttlecraft with Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and some lady commissioner on board and dragged them off to parts unknown.


	11. Far Too Willing

Short chapter is short. But you've had three chapters in the past two weeks.

This is a rather unique reference. It both does and does not exist, mostly because it's based off of a book I want to publish. Yes, I wrote it. It's the only reference, the only **thing** in this whole series I have legal claim over.

The episode of Star Trek that Jack's watching here is called _Metamorphosis_. It's the same episode he started to watch at the end of last chapter. I do not own it, I merely watch it.

This chapter is rated T because I warned you this was a **horror** story.

-00000-

In performing the secular exorcism the most important thing to remember is will. The possessed victim is fighting for their identity and as the exorcist your most important task is to lend your will to the will of the victim. Spirits possess humans through using their own strength of will to crush the victim's. Without the structure and focus of a belief system it becomes that much harder for the victim and the exorcist to summon enough force of will to overthrow the spirit.

Of course, the majority of the work in a secular exorcism must be done by the possessed victim. The exorcist merely guides the victim to their own strength of will. This job becomes much more difficult in those rare but dangerous cases where the victim was a willing accomplice in their initial possession by the spirit in question. In the case of the willing possession there is little the exorcist can do aside from attempting to appeal to the victim's sense of self in the hopes that their mind has not yet been completely subsumed. Once this happens there is very little the exorcist can reasonably hope to accomplish.

-author unknown. _Exorcism for the Modern Witch_. 1st ed.

-00000-

Laughter echoed from upstairs. Danny and Jack were laughing about something on late night TV. It vaguely sounded like Vlad was involved. In the lab below, Maddie didn't pay much attention to their antics. Instead she was sitting in front of the computer. Empty plates were stacked next to her and she was seriously contemplating moving the coffee machine down to the lab.

The computer screen showed two screencaps of video. One showed Danny under a ghostly influence, eyes green and maddened as he stuffed cookies into his mouth. One showed herself under that same influence, eyes red and hair wild as she growled at the faded form of her own intangible son. They'd both been like animals, wild hungry animals with nothing more than instinct driving their actions. But that wasn't right, it couldn't be. There was something more there, something still lurking at the back of her mind...

A muffled 'thump' pulled her away from her data. Maddie looked around the lab but nothing was out of place. Nothing out of the ordinary. She got up and did a walkthrough of the lab. The portal was closed, minimal activity behind it. No samples disturbed, no weapons discharged, no doors ajar. She pulled out an ectoweapon and fitted her goggles over her eyes. The world turned red as shadows came to life and auras highlighted the RFID tags imbedded in every invention.

Thump. There it was again. She crouched down into a defensive stance and aimed near where she'd heard the sound.

A rat scurried out from under a bench.

She fired before she knew what was happening. The rat shrieked and raced away, tail singed. Maddie giggled, a nervous sound. Just a rat. No one's come to steal her inventions, just a little rat. Not even a ghost rat.

Shink shink shink THUMP!

Maddie jumped. She spun around, weapon drawn...

She sighed in relief and holstered her ectogun. It was just the imprint. The green blob no longer contented itself with existing as a lump at the bottom of its bell-jar, now it had to puff itself up so it filled the whole glass prison. Blank red eyes pressed against the inside of the glass blinked at her as it threw itself around its jar. The seal broke with every thrash before clamping back down with that 'thump' sound she'd been so afraid of.

"I think you need a bigger jar," she said.

_Yes, a bigger jar..._

She got a larger bell-jar out of the cabinet and set up the portable ghost shield around the lab bench. She'd worked too hard on this imprint for it to crawl away during something as routine as changing containers.

_Worked far too hard..._

Shield on, she lifted the bell-jar off of the imprint.

A green blob the exact size and shape of its old glass prison relaxed on the lab bench and spread out. She could have sworn it _sighed_. It was so much bigger than it used to be...

"You've... gotten big," she marveled. "Why is that? How?"

Her stomach growled. She ignored it as she had done for days now.

The imprint raised itself up, stretched up to level its blank red eyes with her gaze.

A shiver arced up her spine, a premonition of something unknown... She reached for the larger bell-jar.

The imprint lashed out and wrapped a tendril around her wrist. Quickly that tendril lengthened, crawled up her arm to wrap around her shoulders. A moment was all she had to try to crane her neck away from that groping tongue-like appendage before she felt cold ectoplasm on her face.

Maddie shuddered with revulsion _anticipation_ as that filthy _hungry_ imprint slid slimy _soft_ tendrils over her face. Her goggles were lifted away by those groping, disgusting, _knowing_ tendrils. She clamped her eyes shut against the sight _but why?_ as those things slid under her radiation jumpsuit to wrap around her neck and, oh god no _yes_ lower still... Oh how disgusting _intriguing..._

_You didn't resist last time..._

There was... a voice... but... wasn't it her voice?

_Last time you were willing. Oh so willing. It's easier to be willing..._

Couldn't be true... She'd never give herself willingly to any filthy ghost... She cringed as she felt where those slimy _comforting _psudopods were roaming next...

_Never? No... Not never... Always..._

Never...

_Not even for what you hunger?_

Hunger... Maddie felt the familiar void growing in her middle as the imprint began to contaminate her with its taint _its gifts..._

_You hunger... Knowledge, power, prestige..._

No...

_Recognition... For your genius... You hunger..._

Oh God please no...

_Yes..._

Stop it... Please... Noooo...

_Yesssss..._

_We... hunger..._

-00000-

Jack looked at the clock. It was past midnight and Maddie still hadn't deigned to come out of the lab. He swore sometimes it felt like she loved her work more than she loved him. He pulled himself away from Star Trek and the strange scene of a man laying himself out to be engulfed by a space blob. He never liked this episode anyway, too creepy what with the blob and the guy and the constant gleeful willingness to be engulfed by that thing.

"Mads, you down here?" Jack called down the stairs. He made his way down into the lab. A brilliant smile broke out on his face as he saw her. It faded as he saw she was distracted. "Maddie," he said.

Maddie stood in front of that damned imprint, staring at it again. He wasn't sure but he could have sworn it was held under a bigger bell-jar, a volume it nearly filled. But that idea was just silly. She'd have to be feeding it for it to grow and there was no way she'd do that. He came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her.

She tensed before recognizing that wall of orange and relaxing into it. She sighed into her husband's embrace and thoroughly ignored the indignant glare the imprint gave her. It must have been her imagination; imprints don't feel...

"You've been working too hard again," Jack said. "Your eyes are all red. You need a good night's sleep."

Maddie's stomach growled. She felt so empty... "And a good meal," she said. "I think I missed dinner. Come on, I'm done here for the night. Let's go get a snack and then I need a shower. I feel all funky for some reason."

Jack led her up the stairs, an arm kept wrapped around her waist. She seemed thinner than she used to be, like she wasn't eating nearly enough. He chalked it up to stress and far too many long hours.

"Oh, and I want to move the coffee machine downstairs," she said.

Jack groaned.


	12. Creepy Indulgent Bonding

The _American Journal on Addictions_ is a real peer-reviewed journal. I do not own it.

Something about Dr. Peter Venkmen. He does have 2 PhDs. He did hold the post of Professor at Columbia University before his tenure was revoked and his position terminated. He is a very intelligent, eccentric man who is very willing to look past the obvious for the weirdness under the surface. What I'm trying to say here is that every word he writes here accurately applies to Vlad's actions, conscious and subconscious. The root cause is more weird than Venkman knows (at this time, anyway...) but he's sussed out the effect perfectly.

That is why this chapter is rated T.

-00000-

Conceptually, self-destruction as a pattern of behavior is well understood. Certain actions taken by the depressed, disturbed, or self-hating figure can be classified as self-destructive if they are taken specifically to cause harm to the physical, emotional, or social self (Baumeister, et al. 1988). Self-harm is the most commonly studied self-destructive behavior but it is by no means the most interesting.

Progressive psychological tolerance is a pattern of behavior where over time a person requires more and more extreme sensation to achieve the same level of satisfaction. Novel sensations grow commonplace very quickly. As a result the person will, sometimes unconsciously, seek out these extreme sensations. Hedonism is often the result. Such a propensity toward this hedonism is dangerous in certain situations. It is not unheard of for the hedonist to ignore safety warnings in order to seek out new sensation. This hedonism easily becomes self-harm when the sensations sought are expected to cause harm.

As with many types of self-destructive behaviors, progressive psychological tolerance is often a subconscious cry for help. However the ego of the sufferer will often lead him to refuse to accept the very help he needs.

-Venkmen, P. **Progressive Psychological Tolerance and Sex Addiction**. _The American Journal on Addictions_, 1992.

-00000-

Danny Phantom flitted through Vlad's mansion on a search for the man. Burning questions led him to forgo waiting for Vlad's next evil plan, favoring instead the direct route, to demand answers. He was going for the vengeful spirit effect but it was ruined by the jingle-jingle of Maddie's bell as the cat gleefully chased after him in his search. Worse, he couldn't lose her by phasing through doors. Somehow she followed. Danny wasn't sure if Vlad had been experimenting on making half-ghost-cats or if one of the Chamberlain's staff was assigned to making her life more ghostly.

Huh, the second floor atrium was new. He phased through the door.

Sunlight streamed down from three sides through tall plate-glass windows. A skylight overhead filtered in even more light. Gleaming pink marble tiled the floor, walls, and ceiling. Copper accents ran up the corners and between stones to an intricate pattern across the ceiling. The center of the room was dominated by a recessed jacuzzi. The faded form of one of the Chamberlain's staff floated near the edge of the room, ready to come when called upon by the man reclining chest-deep in the jacuzzi.

"What is it with you?" Danny demanded.

Vlad opened one eye and leveled his red gaze at the intruder. Danny floated near the door, his aura glowing cold and blue around him. His legs dissolved into a ghostly tail, adding to the boy's inhumanity. It was all ruined when a transparent hand phased Maddie through the closed door and she bounded up to bat playfully at the end of Danny's tail, bell on her neck jingling merrily.

Vlad smirked. He lifted his half-glass of champagne off of the edge of the pool and took a leisurely sip. "So... were you going to be more specific or should I start guessing randomly?" he drawled.

There were a multitude of questions Danny came here to ask. Why his ice powers flared every time he and Sam tried to get to second base. Why he was always so hungry lately. If Vlad was really gay and just failing to hide it. And more that popped up just from his visit today. Such as how Maddie had gotten in and why in hell she thought his ghost tail was a cat toy. How an atrium like this was built so quickly. In the end the one that popped out had nothing to do with any of these questions.

"Why can't you soak in water like a normal human being?" Danny asked.

Vlad looked down at himself. He didn't see anything odd. The jacuzzi was filled with dark mud that clung to his skin and shimmered in the sunlight like liquid black latex. Water was being pumped up from underneath to add soft bubbles and to keep everything fluid. "Am I a normal human being?" he asked.

Danny opened his mouth to say something scathing and witty. It died on his lips as his mind pulled up a checklist of normal things that people do and found Vlad matched with precisely zero points. "No you're not," he concluded.

"So why hold me to their standards?"

"So why mud? Why not money or something?" Danny asked.

Vlad sneered at the terribly stereotypical idea. "I'm not here for your benefit, Daniel," he warned. "I'm here to enjoy my day off. If you insist on asking stupid questions then at least get in so I can dunk you for your insolence."

Danny manifested his legs and took human form. Maddie's bell jingled as she crouched down then pounced, tackling his shoelaces while she purred and purred. How often did he really get to flat-out **ask** Vlad all the burning questions in his mind? And the last time hadn't been nearly as bad as he'd feared it would be. Except... "If you make me get a manicure again I will hurt you," he warned.

Vlad chuckled and sipped his champagne.

Danny sighed and pulled off his t-shirt. He glanced at Vlad to see the man with his eyes closed and one hand held in front of his face for the benefit of Danny's modesty. Danny quickly stripped and carefully put one foot in.

The mud yielded like water but thickened like quicksand once he stopped moving. He felt underneath and found some sort of ledge around the edge of the jacuzzi, no more than knee deep. He stepped in and sat down, fidgeting uncomfortably as he felt that strange constriction around his body whenever he stopped moving. He propped his elbows up on the marble floor and dangled his feet over the ledge. He was surprised when his toes brushed the bottom, dispelling the idea that this was an endless quicksand pit. Still kind of felt like it though. It made him slightly nervous.

Vlad chanced a glance before putting his hand down. "There now, is this so bad?" he asked, slightly mocking.

"It's not normal," Danny said.

"Whoever said we were normal?" Vlad asked.

"Why shouldn't we try to be?" Danny asked.

"Because we can't. You and I have had that chance stripped from us by undeath and our own actions. Normality is a cage that people hide themselves in because outside there are monsters waiting to rid them of their delusions. You and I are those monsters, Daniel. We have seen the outside world and far beyond it. We've lost our delusions. We're freed from that cage. Don't try and force yourself back in. The humans within won't welcome you back."

Deja vu struck Danny hard as he realized they'd had this conversation before. It was a variation of the 'we're more alike than you realize, you and I' line he'd heard for almost three years now, shouted over battlefields and whispered around unsuspecting spectators. It was getting harder to flat-out deny those words. He decided to change the script instead. "That doesn't mean we have to be abnormal, does it?"

"That means we get to do what we enjoy rather than what we're supposed to. I happen to enjoy this. You should find what you enjoy and learn to indulge yourself."

"And what if I enjoy normal stuff?"

Vlad finished his champagne and offered the glass to Danny. Within rattled a single drunken blackberry. "Then enjoy it," he said. "But not because you're supposed to. And not because you're told to. Because you enjoy it."

Danny nodded and took Vlad's champagne flute. He tipped it back and closed his eyes at the taste of delicately sweet champagne soaked through the juicy berry. One thing was for sure, he certainly enjoyed Vlad's taste in food and drink.

Vlad held up a hand and phased it clean. His spectral attendant replaced his flute and filled it from the half-empty champagne bottle. "So did you have stupid questions or are you just here to get away from responsibility for a few hours?" Vlad asked.

Danny found himself watching the glass in his hand as champagne was poured into it, pondering his next move. He made his decision and put his flute on the marble. "I was wondering," Danny said, trying for nonchalant. He waited until Vlad was mid-sip. "Are you gay?"

Years of practicing his self-control prevented Vlad from spitting or inhaling. It didn't stop him from looking unimpressed. "Have I not made my intentions toward your mother clear enough?" he asked.

"Well, yeah, but that one time you had her you didn't know what to do with her. You remember Colorado, the Plasmius Maximus, being chased by your own mad science creations..." Danny grinned with a perverse glee as he recounted Vlad's humiliating defeat. Vlad clearly remembered it as well given the dark look he was giving the younger halfa and wait a minute...

The next thing Danny knew there was a hand gripping the top of his head, the sun was gone, and he couldn't phase out of whatever was happening to him. It took a moment of flailing hands to realize Vlad was holding him under the surface. He stopped flailing, held both hands straight up and extended his two middle fingers.

The hand holding him under shoved him deeper then disappeared. Danny shot to his feet and glared at Vlad and the vision of nonchalance the older man was projecting. He went intangible and found the jacuzzi was thankfully waist deep.

"I warned you what would happen if you asked stupid questions," Vlad said. His attendant held both of their rescued champagne flutes. One gesture from Vlad and both glasses were offered back.

Danny snatched his glass and shoved himself back onto the ledge. "Wasn't a stupid question," he muttered. "Is a real question. You chase and chase and chase and you never catch her and it seriously looks like you have it _planned_ that way. Like you're chasing her because she's..."

"Safely unattainable," Vlad admitted. "I am. But not for the reason you're thinking."

Danny was confused. "Wait, if you're not gay and you're not planning on winning Mom then what the hell are you doing? There's gotta be plenty of women willing to throw themselves at you. Instead you go home to a _cat_ for fuck's sake."

"Language, Daniel," Vlad warned.

"You take spa days, you wear a cravat, you wear eye make-up, you get _manicures_! And you go home to a cat. How are you not gay?"

Vlad set his champagne flute down on the marble. He leaned back in the mud, letting it crawl up to his shoulders while he steepled his hands in front of him. "It's called an ascot," he said. He fixed Danny with a leer as he let his eyes travel around what skin remained visible above the surface. He grinned in amusement at the boy's reaction, as Danny pulled away slightly then sank up to his neck to hide himself. "I'm not gay, Daniel," he admitted.

"Oh," Danny said. He sat back up, not bothering with intangibility.

"I'm not straight, either," Vlad said. "The dark and shiny look is good for you."

"Wait, what?" It took Danny a moment to realize the mud indeed did look shiny when coating someone. He blushed. "So, what, you're..."

"I'm opportunistic. I consider myself a ghost, Daniel. That means I care much less about it than you seem to think I should. That's why I chase after your mother knowing full well I will never capture her. Because I am a ghost."

Danny was still confused.

Vlad glared at Danny for a moment before he sighed and snatched up his glass of champagne to drain it. Of course the boy didn't know. No one had taught him and he hadn't learned on his own yet. This is why Vlad offered the boy an apprenticeship. A guide was something he'd never had and the price had been higher than what he could pay alone.

"There's much you need to learn, Daniel," Vlad said. "I have the feeling you'd be more comfortable in the meantime if you were clothed." He stood up, stretched, and made to get out.

Danny stood up behind Vlad and brought a hand to his shoulder. "No, I'm okay here," he said, shocking even himself. "We don't have to go anywhere."

Vlad looked just as surprised. After all, how often did Daniel willingly seek his council? He smiled and took Danny's offer, gesturing for the boy to sit next to him. Their attendant was sent off to acquire food and drink. This would take a while.


	13. A Lesson in Exhaustion

This chapter begins the moment the last one ended. You had to wait because I had to fight for the time to write this. Note to the interested: when 50+ year old mothers demand grandchildren they **WILL** start throwing baby showers for husband's former coworker's daughters as 'subtle hints'.

As we get closer to the finale I expect the chapters to grow longer. Also, the debate! Or part of it, anyway.

This chapter is rated T for... various reasons.

-00000-

The following is from a transcript of a debate hosted by Ray's Occult between Dr. Peter Venkmen and Mr. Vladimir Masters.

**Masters**: Everything has to be about sex with you, doesn't it. Observation and the simple act of, gee, _talking_ to my subjects has shown that ghosts don't just flare their cores for sex. They flare their cores for everything! Combat, emotional outbursts, hell, I watched a ghost start to flare out of boredom. Just because ghosts flare for sex doesn't mean every flare is for that purpose. There are analogues in humanity, too. I assume you've kissed your mother at some point. That doesn't mean you have an Oedipus Complex.

**Venkmen**: And yet your argument is flawed because ghosts don't have emotions. They merely mimic them. Everyone knows that. Ghosts no longer have the biological structure necessary to support complex emotion, thought, or sentience.

**Masters**: ::opens with a look that accuses all assembled of idiocy:: You do agree that ectoplasm is an efficient carrier of emotion, right? More efficient than human neurons? Of course you do, your theories are based on this. And you agree that ghosts are composed of ectoplasm. So you're honestly telling me with a straight face that a creature that is composed of a medium that effectively transmits thoughts and processes emotion _better than humans_ can is somehow non-sentient and cannot feel emotions? Do you listen to yourself talk or does that meaty thick skull of yours muffle the sounds enough that you can't hear what comes out of your mouth?

**Venkmen**: Hey!

**Stantz, MC**: Mr. Masters, let's please try to stay on topic.

**Masters**: ::long pause:: My apologies.

**Venkmen**: Of course you're going to say not all flares are sexual. You just don't want to look depraved in public.

**Stantz, MC**: Peter! You too!

**Masters**: ::animalistic growl, fist clenched::

At this point in the debate a measured spike of PKE was observed locally and multiple light bulbs simultaneously burnt out. Analysis suggests these and several similar events throughout the debate were linked to the emotional state of one of the debaters, specifically Mr. Masters. Conclusions at this time would be shaky at best because of lack of data. Follow-up is suggested although it would require Venkmen to be less of a confrontational ass in future correspondences with the subject.

-Spengler, E. _Transcript of Debate Hosted June 6, 1992_. personal archives

-00000-

Vlad Masters didn't remember ever being this stupidly naive. Not when he was so shocked and intrigued by his first ectoblasts that he'd stared at his hand and shot himself in the face. Not during the years after he'd escaped from the hospital and decided it was a good idea to publish over and over as if to dare them to come find him. Not even when the lure of ozone and electrons was so strong he ended up climbing to the roof of the VladCo building with an eight foot copper rod in his hands during many more lightning storms than he'd like to think about. Not that he'd admit to any of these events.

All it had taken was a few choice words and Vlad had Danny spilling the details of his dates with that Manson girl and their disastrously icy ends. Vlad sat back and listened, his champagne flute held to his lips the whole time. It was that or alternate between laughing his ass off and slapping the boy for his idiocy.

"And I talked to Jazz and the best we could come up with is that I'm making it cold every time I feel any sort of strong emotion," Danny ranted. "Her advice was to try and stop feeling! Seriously! How in hell am I supposed to stop feeling! I'm not even sure how to get my emotional reactions back down to normal! They've been weird ever since I got zapped by that damned portal. It's been even worse since that stupid imprint." He slumped down and snatched his own flute off of the marble, draining it in one uncivilized guzzle.

Vlad took a sip then a deep breath as he tamped down the urge to mock the boy. Daniel was, after all, here of his own accord. "Ectoplasm holds onto emotion differently than neurochemicals do," he said. He set his flute on the marble and let his inner sense of the dramatic take over. "Surely you've figured that out by now. The passionate emotions – love, hate, aggression, lust, fury, hunger, envy, vengeance – all have a stronger hold over us than they do over humans. Ghosts are very... _passionate_ creatures, Daniel."

It took a moment for him to realize why Danny looked so uncomfortable, why he giving Vlad such a disturbed, wary, _curious_ look. Only then did Vlad notice he had Danny trapped against the marble edge with his body, his arms braced against the stone to cage the boy, his voice purring in a caressing demand, his eyes smoldering in more ways than one. He pulled back, refusing to seem weirded out by his own actions, and settled as far from Danny as the jacuzzi would allow.

"Th-then why don't you make it cold?" Danny asked. He was very proud that his voice only wavered that much.

"I don't have an ice core," Vlad said. "I have an electrical core. When you feel something particularly strong the temperature drops. When I feel the same I start affecting electric fields."

Danny pouted and sank down into the mudbath, shielding himself up to his neck. "Lucky fruit-loopy bastard," he sniped. "You don't affect people with your core."

Vlad slid closer to Daniel and stopped holding back so much. He very gently reached over to lay a hand on Danny's shoulder and let the spark fly. He smirked as Danny jumped at the painful shock and scootched away, shaking slightly from the force of the jolt. "As you can imagine that might be inconvenient during business negotiations," Vlad said.

Danny glared at Vlad, teeth bared in a silent snarl. Dammit, that **hurt**! Although... that may have been Vlad's plan... "Fine, so you can control yourself and I can't," he snapped. "What's your point?"

Vlad leaned back in the jacuzzi away from the growing area of cold. "My point, my boy, is not that I have more control," he assured. "On the contrary, I probably have about as much control as you do. It's not control that keeps me from shocking my, ah, associates. It's exhaustion."

Danny looked as confused as he felt. Confusion gave way to what he thought Vlad must mean and he found himself holding his stomach as he laughed and laughed.

"I fail to see what's so funny," Vlad said.

"So the old fruitloop's so weak he can't even hold his own against a bunch of **humans** without exhausting his core?" Danny mocked. He didn't care that Vlad's blue eye went red. What was he gonna do, fight? Dunk him again? Ffft. He fixed Vlad with a predatory leer and silently _dared_ the older halfa to do something about it.

Vlad dared. He grabbed Danny by the neck and _pushed_, feeling lightning flowing down his arm to bury itself in the insolent teenager. Bravado snapped as Danny arched back and screamed, hands spasming against the marble. Glass shattered and champagne splashed as flutes were tossed against the unforgiving stone. The stench of ozone grew oppressive as the black mud in the jacuzzi began to boil. Steam rose around them and still Vlad didn't let go, didn't let up.

Danny was in agony. The steam was hot, the mud was hot, the stone was hot, the hand at his throat was hot hot too hot... Everything was too hot. He was going to melt, to burn. Where was the cold? Cold, ice, _anything_... The soft, wonderful, numbing cold...

Instinct reached into his ice core and...

Vlad could see the moment Danny's core cascaded into a flare. It was the moment Danny stopped spasming to the rise and fall of current and retook control of his body with a shudder. It was the moment Vlad's hand went numb and ice began to form over the fingers that gripped the boy's neck. It was the moment he felt his own current turn back on his own core.

Glowing blue eyes glared into pulsing red ones and the pair exchanged snarls of challenge before human forms were shed and hands wrapped around their opponent's throats. Elemental forces warred beyond the puny wills of their half-ghost masters, each fighting for dominance.

Electricity was stronger, more experienced, more depleted. Faster. Its power sparked and then needed time to recharge. Quick flares of unimaginable strength overwhelmed the opposition and then faded before pulsing again. Ozone smoked and light flashed as the air itself started to burn.

Ice was stubborn, slow, oppressive. Incredible reserves sat almost unused beneath a veneer of life. For every crack in the ice the frost spread further, for every pulse of heat the cracks refroze even stronger. Light refracted, trapped within walls of ice. Air howled, ozone contracted, and everything slowed, quenched...

Electricity shrieked in rage as it found itself surrounded. All paths were resistant as the ice grew, shifted, wrapped itself around, and finally closed in.

Captured.

Vlad screamed as his defenses broke and he was overwhelmed. The scream was cut short with an odd snap as suddenly everything... stopped.

Phantom and Plasmius stood in a jacuzzi sunken in pink marble, waist deep in shining black ice. Frost shimmered all up their unmoving bodies, frozen from the inside out. Hands were wrapped around each other's shoulders and neck, locked in a deathless struggle. Their unseeing eyes were open, bright and wide with astonishment. A silent scream still resonated from the throat of one while the other merely looked on with absolute wonder.

-00000-

"This is your fault, Daniel," Vlad snapped. "There's no reason why we couldn't have done this anywhere else."

"No, it's your fault! You grabbed me by the neck and tried to electrocute me!"

"And well deserved. You just had to insult me."

"You're the one who claimed weakness," Danny said, smirking. Yes he hurt, yes he and Vlad were trapped in ice and far too close for either of their tastes, yes he was going to be shaking for a week because of all the voltage but hot damn, he'd never thought Vlad would admit to weakness like that!

Vlad growled but managed to avoid hurting the boy. Only just. "You have no idea what I meant, do you? Daniel, did you receive any sort of instruction concerning your ice core or did you learn how to control yourself by shooting things until it worked?"

Danny crossed his arms over his bare chest, annoyed. "Hey, I went to Frostbite," he defended. "You should be glad I did, too, or you'd still be mayor of Plant-ville."

"And did this 'Frostbite' tell you what a core flare is?" Vlad asked. He pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration. He sincerely hoped...

"A core what?"

Sigh. Exactly the unfortunate answer Vlad expected. He gave Danny a look that straddled the border between pity and horror.

"What?" Danny's humor drained away at the look Vlad was giving him, leaving behind something akin to dread. "What is it?"

"You have no concept of the grave disservice this 'Frostbite' has done to you, Daniel," Vlad said, quiet and serious.

"Hey!" Dread gave way to indignance. Frostbite was a trusted friend, an ally, one who was there when no one else could help. How _dare_ Vlad insult him like that? "He taught me how to stop turning things I touched to ice! He taught me how to control myself so I wouldn't hurt anyone anymore! You have no _idea_ what it was like for me!"

Vlad crossed his arms over his chest and waited for Danny's rant to die. He arched an eyebrow and made every effort to try to ignore the fact that they were still encased in ice from the waist down and he, quite frankly, **hated** to be cold, had ever since his own portal accident. He waited as Daniel went on and on about family, friends, having to wear eight sweaters during a heat wave, inconsequential blather. Finally Vlad had had enough.

"Frostbite never taught you how to exhaust your core," Vlad said.

Danny's rant faltered.

"In order to safely interact with humans I have found I need to exhaust my core manually," Vlad explained. "I have to drain my reserves to such a low level that I barely have access to them. That's why I built this room. That's what I normally do in here. That's what I was planning to do today until you so... impatiently interrupted me while I prepared. That's what I meant by exhaustion. Not weakness. Indulgence. I have to indulge my ghost core from time to time to deplete it. That exhaustion is all that insures I won't electrocute a business associate during a tense meeting or a passionate debate. It's the only thing that keeps them safe from me."

"Oh..." Any remaining rant gave up and died.

"Daniel, do you know what a core flare is?"

"That's like when I'm with Sam and it gets cold while we're making out, right?"

"That is the start of one," Vlad said.

"So what's a core flare like?" Danny asked, genuinely curious.

Vlad took a deep breath to keep from strangling the boy again. Ugh, he was never this stupid when he first figured out his powers. "A core flare for you is exactly like the reason we're encased in ice!" He tried to simply say it but couldn't help it as his voice raised to a shout and a snarl. He glared and tried the whole deep-breath thing again. It wasn't working. He was too distracted by this stupid cold ice and not being able to move or phase through it or even shift to a comfortable position. No, he was trapped like this until it melted or until he gave up and started blasting apart this beautiful marble room he'd just had built. Dammit, and it had taken _months_ to get the copper accents just so...

"Okay, okay, geeze!" Danny tried to shrink away from Vlad's fury. He didn't see what the big deal was. So they were stuck in ice. So? It was... nice. It wasn't cold at all. It was like he was being held in welcoming arms, cradled against a loving bosom. In fact, rather than wanting out he wanted to see what it was like to be surrounded by ice, encased all over, frozen in time with no cares, no worries, no responsibilities, just for a little while. He splayed his hands on the surface of the ice and let his eyes drift shut. They flew open again when the ice seemed to respond, crawling up his hands, his arms, his torso in thick, cloying frost.

"And now you're going to do it again," Vlad grumbled. "I give up." He charged a bolt of ectoplasm in his hands and hoped the ice was strong enough that he wasn't going to damage the stone. He pressed his palms to the ice and felt it shake and shatter around him. He pulled and shifted, trying to...

"Oh god DAMN!" Danny shouted.

Vlad looked over to see Danny's eyes scrunched closed and his face turned away in fury, disgust, annoyance. It took a moment to figure out... Heh. "Then don't look," Vlad said.

Danny growled.

Vlad extracted himself and shook shards of black ice off of him. He had ice in all sorts of uncomfortable places that weren't going to feel right for _days_. He shifted forms so he wouldn't need the cane and found a fuzzy bathrobe. "There," he said. "I'm decent."

Danny opened his eyes to glare at Plasmius. "Now how do I get out of here?" he demanded.

"Ask yourself this, Daniel," Vlad said. "Do you want out? Because you're not getting out until then."

Danny growled. The fire was missing from his voice, however, as the ice kept climbing up his arms to freeze his shoulders. The growl turned to a moan as the ice seemed to pull him down, crystals rearranging to fit him perfectly. "Vlad, please, get me out of here," he begged.

Vlad watched with morbid fascination. "You'll want to take your ghost form before you suffocate," he suggested.

Danny went ghost. Icy blue eyes glared out from under white locks. "I hate you," he said. Ice wrapped around his neck and frost crept up his face and in his hair.

Vlad smiled fondly. "I know, Little Badger. I know."

Blue eyes closed and were gone. The curious effect of liquid ice stopped and the surface of the jacuzzi creaked and snapped as everything froze solid.

Vlad walked away. Daniel would be fine. In a few hours everything would melt and he'd pop back to the surface without a single ill-effect. _Until then he'll have a chance to think, maybe he'll even learn to relax_, Vlad thought.

_It's a shame, _he thought. _If only Daniel had come to me before his core developed then he wouldn't have to go through this. At least, not like this. Not having everything thrust upon him after having his mind poisoned by idiot yetis, his morality usurped by selfish humans, and his intelligence stunted by that moronic father of his._

_He wouldn't have had to consider himself a freak just because as a ghost he reacts to the world differently. Ever since the portal he's... Wait..._

Vlad thought back to Danny's words from earlier. _It's been worse since that stupid imprint_. Since when was Daniel dealing in imprints?


	14. Finding His Price

So writing is starting to feel a bit like pulling teeth and I appear to be driving Vlad's actions into some strange brand of distracted insanity. Luckily this is the last few chapters and, well, Vlad's fairly insane anyway. After this story is finished I'll have to take a break from writing for awhile. I have a series in the Stargate: Atlantis fandom I wrote under a previous name that I want to bring to light. So if you have an interest in Stargate or the Cthulhu Mythos...

Anyway...

Hunger has become the running theme of this story. Not just physical hunger but more complex hungers: the need to learn, the urge to know, the compulsion to collect and consume regardless of the protestations of bystanders. This reference is based off of entries from the _Encyclopedia of Vampires, Werewolves, and Other Monsters _by Rosemary Ellen Guiley, published 2005.

After the debate Venkmen dug deep into trying to find everything Vlad had written, looking for some clue as to what their data meant. Imagine his surprise (and twisted glee) when he found Vlad went from a normal graduate student in 1985 to writing about Voodoo zombies and long term possession contracts in 1987. It didn't take that much of a leap of logic to assume something happened...

This chapter rated T for Vlad being Vlad.

-00000-

Additionally there is the _erestun_, a vampiric spirit that invades a dead or dying victim with the purpose of animating the body for its foul purposes. Historically the preferred victims are villains, robbers, and the sexually depraved. The _erestun_ is considered a variant of the _upir_, an old Russian term synonymous with the more well-known revenant, or as it is called by some researchers the 'individual' (Masters 1987). The _erestun_ is related to the _eretik_, a similar Russian vampire known for heresy and its particularly gluttonous style of cannibalism. The _Mercure Galent_ of 1693 and 1694 describes the Russian vampire thusly:

_They make their appearance from noon to midnight, and come and suck the blood of living men or animals in such abundance that sometimes it flows from them at the nose, and principally at the ears, and sometimes the corpse swims in its own blood oozed out into its coffin. It is said that the vampire has a sort of hunger, which makes him eat the linen which envelops him._

It has been suggested that the victim of such an invasion would retain conscious control over the _erestun_ even after the death of said victim (Masters 1987a). Without evidence in the form of experimental data this assumption must be dismissed as wishful thinking and highly unlikely. At best, if the victim's consciousness manages to survive the initial invasion he might be capable of directing the _erestun_'s gluttonous nature into nonphysical hungers. There are dangers with this possibility as the _erestun_'s nature would prevent the victim from even making the effort to keep his physical form safe from the dangers of his own experimentation.

-Venkmen, P. **Historical Vampirism in the Modern Age**. _Journal of Paranormal Sociology_, 1992.

Oh how cute. The ghostbuster thinks he knows something. Try again when you have something realistic.

Masters, V. Personal Correspondence.

-00000-

Tucker had never been here before.

Okay, that was a lie. He'd been to Vlad's Amity Park mansion before. Evil plans, Danny's infernal luck getting in Vlad's way, day saved, he'd been here before. He'd just never been here on official business before. Not with Amanda driving him, kicking him out of her car, and taking off with a squeal of tires and a cloud of dust.

Tucker was beginning to think she didn't like him all that much. He couldn't imagine why.

Ah, well. Tucker brushed dust off of his sleeves. That was another weird thing about today. Not only had Vlad called him as soon as he got to City Hall to tell him to get his butt over here but he'd been ordered to get Amanda to drive him home so he could change into his street-clothes. The fruitloop had something planned, all right. Something... fruit-loopy.

Years of being Danny's friend did not prevent him from jumping at the ghost who stuck his head through the door. Nor did it make him all that comfortable with talking to the official-looking Victorian ghost who led him into a sitting room, through the hasn't-been-secret-in-awhile door behind the fireplace, to the lab access elevator.

The ghost gave him a disdainful look. "Sir is in the lab downstairs," it said.

"Okay..." Tucker said. He wasn't sure whether he should trust this ghost or not.

"Tell Sir that the Chamberlain finds you to be imminently useless." It pushed a button.

"Hey!" Tucker's indignance was cut off as the elevator doors closed. He crossed his arms in a huff and pouted. He wasn't relaying any message like that no matter how official the ghost looked.

The descent began. Tucker checked his watch as the seconds turned into minutes and he couldn't shake the very real feeling that this elevator went nowhere or at least nowhere good. Didn't Hell have an elevator? He wasn't sure, were the outer doors of this one painted red? Was 'down' the only direction? He tried to shake off the feeling of dread as his watch informed him he'd been descending for over three minutes...

Ding. Eerily silent doors slid open to a room that seemed familiar. He couldn't place it...

Wait...

He remembered months ago. Barely escaping the atmosphere of Venus alive. Danny passed out. The Specter Speeder starting to buckle, containment failing. The green mist of the Ghost Zone seeping through the eye-watering sting of acid fumes. Vlad directing them to a portal then flying away. Trapped in a lab with no exits until Danny woke up to phase them out and take them home. The odd sense of coincidence when they found the lab to be buried under Amity Park...

That lab. _This_ underground lab... It made sense for Vlad to have a lab like this. He stepped out of the elevator and tried not to jump as the doors closed after him, locking him inside. Hands ran over lab benches pushed against one wall. He swore he could still smell sulfuric acid even after all this time...

"I thought I heard something." There were voices out in the complex. How big were these labs anyway? What exactly was down here?

"You always hear something. Focus. Can you fix it or not?"

"I am Technus! Master of All Things Electronic and Mechanical! This robotic creature of yours will **bow** to my skills!"

"Of course, Nicolai. But how about actually fixing it instead of trying to talk it into working?"

Tucker found himself in a corridor, following the sound of voices. One owner was obvious but the other... He knew the other... He stuck his head around the corner and...

Tucker let out the breath he didn't know he was holding. It came out in a whisper of nervous giggles as he took in the scene. This section of the lab was dominated by the sleek black machine raised up ever so slightly on a lift. Technus and Plasmius floated in front of it. Both of their capes were hanging on a rack in the corner alongside several lab coats and a leather apron. Plasmius held a wrench in one hand and oil splashes marred the white suit of his ghost form. Technus had both hands in the engine and Tucker could swear he heard it resonate with the ghost's presence. It was a beautiful machine, sleek and powerful with a growl darker than its glossy black coat. Custom something or other.

He couldn't believe he'd been dragged away from his summer and from his internship and down into this mad science lab to work on Vlad's car.

Come to think of it, though, he couldn't remember Vlad driving himself anywhere since the disasteroid. Wait, where did Technus go? Fear drew its icy finger up his spine.

"A **SPY!**" Tucker jumped as his arms were captured in a vise-like grip. Technus lifted him off the floor and carried him into the lab where Vlad looked like he was trying not to laugh. "I, Technus, have captured one of the annoying children! Surely they are planning another attempt on our gloriously evil plans!"

"I ordered him here," Vlad said.

"Oh." Technus deflated, looking almost disappointed. "I should... put him down then?"

"Yes!" Tucker shouted, kicking futilely at the air.

Vlad made a dismissive gesture. Technus pouted and dumped Tucker on the floor. Tucker picked himself up and glared at the ghost of technology.

"Oh suck it up, Foley," Vlad scolded. "You're here for a reason." He flew up and settled himself behind the wheel of the car. Plasmius became Masters as he ran his hands over the buttery soft leather of the interior. He leaned back in the driver's seat and sighed, a contented sound that seemed almost wistful.

"What reason would that be?" Tucker asked.

Vlad pressed his left foot against the clutch pedal. Try as he might he couldn't do anything about the damage that left that leg permanently intangible from the knee down. His foot just phased through the clutch. "Find a way that I can drive this car again," he ordered.

Tucker looked around the inside of the car with all the questionable skill of a teenager fresh out of Driver's Education. "You could drive an automatic," he suggested.

Vlad looked affronted, insulted, even horrified. He glared at Tucker before gesturing at Technus. "Hurt him," he purred. "_Please._"

Tucker backed away, eyes clamping shut and his arms going up to protect his head. All around him he heard the maniacal laughter of the vengeful ghost as Technus descended. His hair all stood on end as the stench of ozone tainted the air. And then...

It was all over. Tucker opened his eyes to see the most horrifying sight he could imagine. All of his pockets were empty. PDAs, cell phone, even a pocket calculator were dancing to the whims of someone else. Someone who wasn't Tucker Foley. _His babies weren't his anymore!_

Technus cackled and shot off down a new corridor. Tucker started to run after him before despair took over and he fell to his knees.

"Restricting myself to an automatic transmission would be like confining you to a typewriter and rotary phone," Vlad said. Through his unshed tears Tucker could hear the man's haughty disdain. Tucker glared up at the man who so casually stood next to his precious car. It didn't seem _fair_...

"And **that** was to prove a point?" Tucker demanded. He hauled himself to his feet. He wasn't sure what he could really **do** to Vlad but he really wanted to-

"Stop whining and I'll buy you an iPhone," Vlad purred.

-to hug him. That was what Tucker wanted to do. He almost tried to before he realized just how wrong that thought was. _Hugging_ Vlad? His mind crawled at the very idea. But... iPhone... The one thing he'd been saving all his allowance for and then his dad said 'no' because of the monthly fees...

Vlad didn't even try to hide his amusement. The boy's inner turmoil was just so entertaining. His evil laughter echoed off of the lab walls, surrounding them both.

The sounds of evil dragged Tucker out of his lustful wantings to glare at Vlad again. He had to decline. He had no choice. Accepting bribes from Vlad would amount to betraying Danny. Sure it was just an iPhone but where would it stop? First it was material bribes then small favors then, what, convincing Danny to join the fruitloop? Is that where it would end? Would it end? No, he had to turn this down. He had to. "Okay," he said.

_Wait, what the hell!_ Tucker shouted at his own mind, reminding himself of the dangers of accepting anything from evil fruitloops. The iPhone was just a gateway drug on the road to evil villainy! He didn't seriously think he'd be able to stop if he started down this road, did he? "Wait, no!" he blurted.

Vlad seemed to glide around Tucker, letting one hand trail around his neck. "Are you sure? I offer this freely. Think of it as... a perk of working for me, my boy. I treat all of my employees well. I'm just offering you the same benefits."

Tucker shuddered as his inner protestations grew softer, quieter. They were no less vehement but they shouted at him from so far away... "I shouldn't," he whispered.

"Why not?" Vlad purred. "Why shouldn't you take what you want when it's offered? What harm is there in accepting nothing more than your rightful due?"

Tucker felt a strange trickle on his chin. He reached up to wipe away the drool.

"Tell you what. How about a compromise? Goods for services? Just a conversation. Come upstairs with me and we'll talk." Vlad wrapped one arm around Tucker's shoulders and gently began to guide him out of the lab.

The movement confused him. Tucker looked back at the sleek black car he thought he was here to work on. Vlad followed his gaze. "Don't you worry about that," he purred. "Technus can have his fun. I'm sure he'll come up with something elegant. He usually does."

That seemed like an excellent idea. Tucker nodded and let himself be led out of the lab. It didn't seem strange at all as Plasmius pulled his cape off of the rack with a flourish and fastened it around his neck. Not even when Vlad took Tucker under a wing of that cape and pulled him close as they walked. It seemed perfectly normal to walk so close to this villain like he was a trusted friend.

Somehow, somewhere, something in the back of Tucker's mind was screaming. He had no idea why.

-00000-

"Wait, you **bribed** Walker?" Tucker asked, laughing. "I thought that was against the rules!"

Vlad grinned, freely showing fangs as he visibly basked in his own evil genius. "Every official is corrupt, Tucker," he said. "Even me, but you knew that one. It's all a matter of finding their price and then matching it." They were in a private library, lounging in plush chairs. An array of foods were spread out on the coffee table between them. A bottle was open and they each had glasses of sweet honey wine that glowed a faint green.

"But still! What could you possibly bribe him with?"

Vlad smirked and held up his wineglass. Its contents moved without heed to the laws of fluid dynamics before settling back down and continuing its ghostly green glow. He somehow doubted the boy would understand his answer.

Tucker reached for the platter on the table and started rolling a piece of cheese in a slice of ham. "Fine then, keep your secrets," he said.

Vlad sipped glowing honey mead before putting his glass down. He went over the the mantle on he fireplace and pulled a cigar out of a humidor. He snipped off the head and gently pressed the foot to his own tongue. The slight scent of ozone rose from the spark. He brought the cigar to his lips and pulled a mouthful of smoke.

"That was both incredibly cool and completely explains why you can't get dates," Tucker said.

Vlad remembered he had an audience. He turned around to glare at the boy, eyebrow raised. "Oh?" he asked.

"If you can light things on fire with your tongue then who's gonna want to risk kissing you?"

Vlad looked surprised and thoughtful. He'd honestly never considered that before. Of course, ghosts were unlikely to care and his human prospects were kept purposefully thin. Maybe he could use this. Something he'd long ago learned was never to ignore an advantage, especially one that could be used to intimidate. That's why he kept his hair long in a world dominated by ultra-masculine cuts and bad toupees, why he wore a Victorian-style knotted ascot instead of a boring tie, why he revealed his ghost form when he did, and why he continued to remind people of it by seeing through the red eye of his ghost form instead of breaking down and getting the more traditional glass eye or eyepatch.

"Speaking of dates how is Daniel's mother?" Vlad asked.

Tucker gave Vlad a glare which the man returned as a knowing, creepy leer. "Working on something," Tucker said. "Danny says she never leaves the lab anymore. He's kinda disturbed by it."

"She's not working on anything I should be worried about, is she? Not planning on stripping anyone of their ghost halves or something?"

"Nah," Tucker said, waving his hand in a dismissive gesture. The motion confused him for a second but the thought didn't last long. "Right after summer started she found this imprint thing. It crawled through Danny's head and he says she's been studying it ever since. Refuses to get rid of it. He says it's creepy but it's just an imprint so it's not like there's any real danger or anything."

Vlad drew a mouthful of smoke and held it, thoughtful. He knew better than to dismiss imprints as harmless. Experience had taught him that, experience with a certain imprint's thrall and the power she wielded at its allowance. She could be quite frightening when feeding, beautiful when glutted, dangerous when ravenous. Oh yes, he had experience with imprints and their danger. "Imprints favor a single emotion," he mused, words escaping in a puff of smoke. "Do they know what this one favors?"

"What? I dunno about 'favoring' but Danny says it's an imprint of gluttony or hunger or something. I wouldn't be surprised, he eats like he's been starving all summer."

"That's not entirely a bad thing," Vlad mused. "He doesn't eat enough."

"You wouldn't say that if you saw how much he eats." As if to punctuate his words Tucker grabbed a piece of cold chicken off of the table and ripped into it with his teeth.

Vlad ignored the boy and his lack of manners. An imprint of hunger... He made his way back to his chair, grabbing his glass of honey wine on the way. If Foley's words were accurate then Daniel was only peripherally under its influence. Remove the imprint from the vicinity and Daniel would eventually revert back to normal. No, he wasn't in danger. Rather it was the researcher who spent all her time with the thing who worried him. If Daniel got his ridiculous idea about imprints being harmless from his parents then...

Vlad's spine went straight and his glass dropped to the floor as his hand went intangible without permission. Shocked eyes looked at the oblivious boy, though maybe not so oblivious as he seemed to realize something was going on.

"Foley, I need you to tell me all you know about this imprint," Vlad said.

"Why?" Tucker asked, wary. The tension in the room wasn't lost to him.

"Because Madeline may be in danger."


	15. Enthralled

I originally meant for Vlad to be the one to write this paper but considering where the references have been going it makes more sense for it to fall under Venkmen's name. The subject was someone Egon met as a researcher during the Ghostbuster's hiatus (the time between movies where they weren't allowed to practice). He seduced her after he found they had the same professional interests: making little children cry. He, ah, reevaluated their relationship the moment he realized she was feeding off of his research subjects. The 'physical exam' was less a scientific endeavor and more a result of some interesting nights on the town.

The subject is someone we all know and love to hate.

This chapter rated hard T for, well, for the implications, the veiled allegory, the nightmares it might inspire.

-00000-

The subject was a human female of apparent early-middle age. She claimed association with a spirit she described as her 'assistant' for a period of no less than one hundred fifty years. The subject was able to back up her claim of age by revealing several personal details of historical figures she had known over the course of her lifetime. In multiple cases her details did not match accepted historical fact but instead were found to match with 'new data', 'theoretical discussion', or in one case 'conspiracy theory'. The researchers were inclined to accept her claim of age after she revealed information that would revolutionize the historical understanding of Freudian Psychology and gave the researchers the exact place and method of acquiring the necessary manuscripts. These letters were donated to Columbia University and have refined academia's view of Sigmund Freud.

Despite her claim of extreme age a cursory physical exam showed all the signs of life. No set approximate age could be gained from physical exam. Figure 2 compares the subject's exam results against those of women of similar size and build across several age categories. Claims of being alive are in question given the subject's unusual PKE values.

-Spengler, E., Venkmen, V. **A Case Study of Long Term Spirit Association**. _Journal of Psychical Research_. 1992.

I know her. She's the thrall to an imprint of despair. Yes, just an imprint. And yes, she is still alive. It feeds off of her physically. With its influence she's able to leech the despair it inspires to keep herself young and beautiful. It's a good thing you didn't keep her distracted for long; if she goes too long without feeding she'll rapidly age and die. I hear if you die as an imprint's thrall you remain enthralled for as long as that imprint exists.

Venkmen would love talking shop with her, she's almost as bad of a psychologist as he is. Just try and stay out of her way when she's hungry.

-Masters, V. Personal Correspondence.

-00000-

The world was a strange gray, a black and white veil of shadows. Dust and cobwebs covered every surface, every plane caked with neglect and death. Still she pushed her way past the dusty table, through the heavy gray door and the spiderwebbed doorway, down the stairs. The same stairs she'd seen every night, every **day** since...

It didn't matter now. Down those stairs into the shadows, the cloying darkness that hovered over everything slowly swallowed her up as she descended. Darker... Darker... Nothing but blackness, a darkness that seemed to glow with an unseen light, something outside her visual spectrum. Something _more..._

A gentle rushing sound and the blackness was filled with light, green light. She shielded her eyes from the bright glowing well of green and its terrible light. The shadows sharpened, crumbled, disappeared, nothing left but green light everywhere, everything glowing. Even she glowed now, the grays of her skin, her hair, her radiation suit washed away, nothing but shades of glowing green.

A hand on her shoulder pulled her attention. She turned to face its owner. A man stood there, a gaunt man she'd seen before but never in life. A man who knew her all too well though she didn't understand how. "Who are you?" she asked, backing away from his blank red eyes.

"You know who I am," he said, his voice maddeningly familiar.

She started to back away from him, fear brewing when he followed her. "What do you want with me?"

"I want what you want," he said. He reached out to her to touch her face. His fingertips felt oddly soft, slimy...

"I want to go home," she said. "I want to get out of here." Still she backed away.

His expression widened into a pleased grin. "I know, Madeline," he said. "Let me take you home."

It took a moment before she realized he'd backed her right up to the edge of that green glowing well. Her blood ran cold when she recognized where she was. The house, the lab, _her_ lab, and this... The ghost portal. She opened her mouth to scream just as his hands went to her chest and pushed.

Maddie Fenton sat up, her screams dying just on the edge of her lips. She blinked into the darkness. She was in her bedroom. In bed. Her big lump of a husband mumbled in his sleep and wrapped his arms around her waist as he slept. It was a dream. It was the same dream she'd been having for weeks now although each time it changed slightly. Got clearer. Grew longer. This was the longest it had ever been. The clearest. She could recall every strand of spider silk in her ruined kitchen, every speck of dust in the living room. The shadows in the lab had been so thick, so _real..._ And who was that man?

One thing was for certain, she was not going to be getting back to sleep tonight. She pulled Jack's arms from around her waist and got out of bed. He groaned and clutched her pillow, nuzzling his face into it as he mumbled her name. Maddie ran her fingers through his hair. He was cute when he slept, all the lines on his face from the past twenty years faded and he looked just like the college student she used to stay up all night with. She kissed his cheek and grabbed her radiation jumpsuit. If she was going to be awake at, what was it, god-awful AM, then she was going to try to get some work done.

The house was quiet. Even Danny was home tonight, sprawled halfway across his bed with the covers kicked off and his bedroom door wide open. A faint blue mist rose from his lips on every exhale and his room seemed so much colder than the rest of the house. Jazz's bedroom door was closed but boxes of her things were neatly stacked in the hallway awaiting the move to Stanford. The dust was gone, the cobwebs from her dream were missing. Maddie shook the feeling of dread out of her head as she descended the stairs. Orange light from streetlamps outside flooded through the living room windows, dispelling the gray she feared she might see.

The kitchen was dark and shadowed, that gray seeping along the edges of things. Even the bright yellow-orange radiation symbol on the lab door seemed subdued somehow. She pushed the lead-lined door open and stared into the oppressive inky darkness below. A flick of a switch and the shadows dissipated, running scared under benches and behind equipment. The doors to the ghost portal were closed, that faint whoosh of the singularity warring with the buzzing of fluorescent lights in the silence. The imprint stirred in its bell-jar, a solid mass of green ectoplasm that blinked up at her. The jar wiggled, whatever seal it once had lost long ago as the blob had outgrown every such container she had.

The lab door closed with a sense of oppressive finality as she made her way down the stairs. She turned the computer on, started the coffee machine, and got a powerbar out of her stash. She stared at the imprint, not really seeing it as it oozed out under the failed seal. The blob seemed to stretch and sigh once it was free before gazing right back at her.

Before she knew what she was doing she'd tossed a piece of her powerbar at it. The ghost stretched out and caught it in midair. Wet, smacking sounds accompanied its motions as it chewed. It didn't so much as swallow as the powerbar dissolved into its form.

"What are you?" she asked.

That incessant voice in her head answered her. _I hunger._

"I see you in my dreams, don't I." It wasn't so much a question as a realization. "You're the thin man who tries to coerce me into the ghost portal."

_Yes. You hunger._

"No, I don't hunger."

_Yes. You do. For knowledge. For prestige. For recognition. For me._

She tossed the empty wrapper into a trash bin. "I definitely do not hunger for you," she said.

_Oh but you do. You have. You always will. You're mine, Madeline. You gave yourself to me willingly._

Maddie's blood ran cold as she saw this simple imprint, too small to be anything dangerous, ooze off the table and crawl towards her. She backed away, disturbed memory making damned sure the ghost portal wasn't right behind her. No, nothing but wall. "I would never give myself to an ectoplasmic scum like you," she spat.

The imprint shot forward, leaping and crawling like a spherical frog. It splashed against her boots and very quickly climbed her form, tendrils wrapping around her. She reached out for something, anything to get it away but it reached out to her wrists and clamped them against her sides. It slid up her torso, two big pseudopods sliding over her shoulders like arms. Blank red eyes, not so blank anymore, rose up to match her gaze. Its misshapen mouth opened in a feral grin before its slimy tongue reached out for her, licking along her cheek as she tried to cringe away.

_It's easier to be willing, isn't it?_

"I'll fight you," she ground past clenched teeth. She would not give this... **thing** the satisfaction of making her scream. Hatred and disgust seethed through her mind as her body betrayed her. Hunger gnawed at her insides as her clenched fists relaxed, her tensed body began to allow this invasion of her very will...

_Then by all means, try to resist me._ The imprint spread out along its own tendrils, attempting to engulf her. The pseudopods on her neck grew heavy and its tongue slid all over her face before finding her mouth and shoving inside.

She could **feel** its triumphant glee as she gave and screamed. Everything was going gray, green, red, all manner of inhuman colors as she grasped desperately at whatever willpower she had left. Her mind clawed at the frayed edges of autonomy, screaming at herself to fight this, throw it off, resist, dammit, **resist**! This... this monster was... was going to... No...

Her eyes drifted shut as her mind's shrieking protests grew softer, slower... Stopped.

"There now, that wasn't so bad, was it?"

Her eyes snapped open. That voice... She looked at its owner and gasped.

She had her arms around a man, a too-thin man with gaunt cheeks and red eyes. His arms were around her neck, draped over her like he belonged there. Bony hands traced lazy circles on her shoulders. Thin lips curled into a smile, creepy and triumphant yet somehow comforting.

She looked past him at their surroundings. The lab was grayed around the middle, red around the edges, boring red-lined monotones that didn't hold her attention no matter how hard she tried. The ghost portal glowed the most brilliant, beautiful green she could have ever imagined.

He followed her gaze. "Do you want to go home?" he asked.

Home. She could hear the seductive call of the portal, something pulling at her very blood though she had no idea how or why. And yet... "I can't," she said.

He looked disappointed.

"I can't leave my husband, my children," she said.

He looked at her and then at the portal. An evil, scheming smile broke out on his face. "We'll stay here, then," he promised. "Until you're strong enough. Then I know how you can bring them home with us. They'll be with you. Forever..."

"I'd like that," she said. The idea of keeping them forever sat well with her, made her feel warm and fuzzy. But for now... "I'm so hungry..."

"I know," he said, stroking his fingers down her cheek. "So am I, Madeline. But it won't be long now."

Both of them looked up at the ceiling as loud footsteps echoed in the kitchen above them. When she glanced back down he was gone. The imprint was back on the lab bench, a glowing green blob wedged halfway under the bell-jar but unable to fit the rest of the way in. She gently tucked stray tendrils underneath and reset the seal as the lab door opened.

"Maddie?"

She looked into a set of hurt-looking red eyes and ran a fingertip down the glass to assure them. "I'm right here, Jack," she called.

Jack came down, still wearing his pajamas. "It's four in the morning," he grumbled. "I just got you to bed."

"I couldn't sleep," she admitted. "Nightmares."

Jack wrapped his arms around her. "Why didn't you wake me up?" he asked. "I'd have made you feel all better..."

Maddie shrugged. He wouldn't understand...

"Come back to bed," he said. "You need sleep, your eyes are all red."

She let him lead her upstairs. As they went she leaned over and whispered in his ear about things she'd rather do than just sleep. He looked surprised then particularly gleeful as he picked her up and carried her as she laughed. Sleep was the last thing on their minds. At least not until her hunger was satisfied.

As they left the imprint popped the seal and oozed out from under the bell-jar. It no longer had to worry about the big chunky human thing stealing her from it anymore. It owned her hunger now. She would feed it while she lived and after that, well... When she died they would feed each other.

_We hunger..._


	16. Resisting Seduction

You might notice some art up there. Yes, there is now cover art for this story and I drew it. If you're interested the full size version is up on my deviantart account. It's named 'A Terrible Hunger' and my name there is NebulousMistress. I am particularly proud of the transparency of the imprint.

Despite this being the climactic chapter I have very little to say. This is long and heavy and I'm going to get slapped for it.

The reference here is the final blow of the feud. It has very, very little to do with this chapter. Rather I feel the intricacies of this chapter have already been explained.

I had to bribe the censors to keep this chapter rated hard T. Otherwise this'd be rated M for Vlad being Vlad, possession, exorcism, and the Lovecraftian-style ending of 'you win but...'

-00000-

Every life form, living or dead, has a primal craving for the calls of its own kind. Humans are naturally attracted to the sound of human voices. Revenants congregate in one of the higher planes for this reason. This inherent drive to seek out members of one's own species is one of the strongest drives in all of existence.

The idea has been proposed that a revenant might believe itself to be alive so strongly that it no longer instinctively recognizes itself as a revenant. This creature would be neither dead nor alive, at home nowhere. This "living revenant" would be a species unto itself. The loneliness experienced by such a creature seems unimaginable to any human because it is. No human being is truly alone as there is always the knowledge in the back of the mind that the species continues. The living revenant has no such knowledge.

-Venkmen, P. _Unique Undead: Irreversible Possessions, Living Revenants, and Half-Ghosts_. Personal Correspondence

I hate you.

-Masters, V. Personal Correspondence

Rather than publish this paper Venkmen did the most noble and most assinine thing he could possibly do. He sent the only copy directly to Vlad, to prove that Peter Venkmen had won their little game. He'd figured out what Vlad really was. He was proving to Vlad that if he so wanted he could give this knowledge to the world but also that he wasn't going to. The paper showed no revulsion, no disapproval, no condemnation, only pity and empathic sadness. The sense that for one terrible moment Venkmen understood.

This was the last time Vlad ever responded to any sort of scientific inquiry. He stopped publishing and disappeared from academia. It was then that he decided to stop stealing merely for survival and instead step things up a bit. He built his fortune and began to pursue Maddie and the Packers to bury the feeling of loneliness, a loneliness that wouldn't abate until the reunion when he learned that for the first time in 20 years he was not alone...

-00000-

Vlad stood on the doorstep of FentonWorks and took a deep breath. He was only here to do reconnaissance on Maddie and maybe earn some of Daniel's trust. After all, he was here in person instead of surreptitiously installing cameras to spy on her in the shower. That meant something, right? Well, it meant he didn't want to get video of Jack like that one time. Even now he shuddered to think about it.

A quick three raps on the door with the head of his cane led to the faint sound of footsteps. The door opened. "Hey, Tuck, I didn't think you got out until..." Danny trailed off as he saw who exactly was at the door. He scowled and slammed it closed.

Well that was nice. Vlad phased through the door and fixed Danny with an unimpressed look. "To what may I owe this particular mood swing?" he drawled.

"Don't pretend you don't know, Plasmius," Danny snapped. "And get out of my house!"

Vlad patted Danny on the head and proceeded to do quite the opposite. He loped over to the couch and made himself right at home. "Does this have something to do with me buying your friend an iPhone and not you?" he guessed.

"Wait, you're buying Tucker an iPhone?" Danny demanded.

Vlad sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Let me guess, now you want one too."

"Not really. But while we're at it you could stop bribing my friends!"

Vlad gave Danny a look that clearly conveyed his refusal to bow to that particular demand. Danny responded with a pout as his eyes glowed green and the room chilled. Vlad upped the ante by playing with his cane, rubbing his fingers along the spine of the coiled serpent at the handle. He concentrated on part of the morph and the serpent's eyes glowed, its mouth opened to reveal a fanged maw, and the cane itself turned white and lengthened into Plasmius's staff. He rubbed the snake's head and it fell back asleep, the staff morphing back into his cane. He looked up to see Danny's eyes filled with wonder, awe, maybe even envy. Vlad grinned, fangs glinting in the afternoon sun.

"You left me frozen in ice for two hours," Danny grumbled.

"As if your own element would hurt you," Vlad said.

"Yeah but I didn't know that! And you just left me there!"

"I wasn't aware you wanted me with you," Vlad said, his voice dropping dangerously close to a purr. "Enveloped in ice, engulfed in your element, unable to escape unless you allowed it. At your utter mercy. You could have had me **begging **for release..."

Vlad had to be well aware of exactly how dirty he was making the situation sound. Danny could think of no other reason why Vlad was romancing every word with his tongue, why that damned purr tickled the edge of his perception and made it, ah, embarrassing to stand up. "I-I had no idea what was happening to me," he said, almost all of his bravado burned away by the blush on his cheeks.

"And yet you still enjoyed it," Vlad said, leering. That leer turned into a full-on lecherous grin when Daniel could only look at the floor and nod. "You should enjoy yourself more often."

Danny's head snapped up to give Vlad a thoroughly disturbed look. Vlad merely laughed before hauling himself to his feet. "As amusing as this is, I'm here for a reason," he said. "I hear your mother's been busy."

Danny glared at Vlad. Of course. The whole 'safely unattainable' excuse was just to lull him into a false sense of security. "She's been in the lab all summer," Danny said. "Working on something."

"An imprint, I hear. Hunger. Sometimes she doesn't leave the lab for days, or so I've heard."

Danny bared his teeth, his eyes flashing green again. All of Vlad's old tricks were right there, laid out in front of them.

"And of course as she is a world renowned expert on ghosts she's made sure to take all the necessary precautions," Vlad said, gently mocking her and her 'expertise'. "Isolating the imprint, taking frequent breaks to avoid its influence and of course she would never, ever willingly let it possess her..."

Danny's anger faded under a sea of confusion. As far as he knew his mom was doing the exact opposite of these 'precautions' Vlad mentioned. But then... "It's just an imprint," he said. "What can it do, really? Make her gain weight from all the cookie binges?"

"You do know that Spectra is nearly powerless on her own," Vlad said.

"Wait, what?" Now Danny was really confused. "What does Spectra have to do with Mom?"

"Spectra feeds on despair. You've experienced it firsthand. Surely you knew that as a mere thrall nearly all of her power comes from Bertrand. An imprint."

Vlad smirked as he could **see **the realization slowly happen in Daniel's mind. Confusion gave way to recognition and then increasing levels of terror. "She's the only ghost you've never been able to defeat without help if I'm not mistaken," Vlad said. "Just an imprint..."

Terror broke as Danny went ghost and bolted upstairs, shouting as he flew. "DAD! We've got a problem!"

Vlad waited the two seconds until Daniel was out of sight before heading into the kitchen. He phased through the heavy lead-lined doors into the Fenton's basement laboratory. Compared to his own lab it was cluttered down here. Inventions lay scattered about, the portal doors were half-open, samples of ectoplasm in test tubes were scattered around on tables, the weapons locker was unlocked. It was an oddly comforting mess. That comfort, however, ended the moment he saw the lab's occupants.

"Oh, Madeline," he whispered. "What have you done to yourself?"

Her jumpsuit hung loose on her formerly voluptuous figure. The black latex sheen of her gloves seemed subdued somehow. Her skin was pale, her cheeks sunken, her hair wild, her lips almost unnaturally red. But her eyes... Hunger shown through those eyes, red eyes that glowed with her own intelligence and the inner strength that Vlad had lusted after for almost twenty-five years. He barely registered the large green blob she carried like a beloved pet nor the care it seemed to show as it slid slimy tendrils over her figure and up to caress her face.

"Your eyes are red, my dear," he murmured.

Maddie gently placed the imprint on a lab bench. It squeezed her, a full-body embrace, before unwrapping itself from all around her. She turned toward her guest, red eyes gauging exactly how to get what she wanted from him. She knew this one, yes, knew exactly what he wanted. His hunger would be delicious... She sauntered towards him. "That's not the only change," she purred.

Vlad backed away from her. She wasn't herself, not anymore. This wasn't the woman he chased... "I'm sure it isn't," he admitted.

"It's been such a wonderful experience," she said almost casually. "It's amazing how blind I used to be. My eyes have been opened, Vlad. I see exactly what I've been missing. What I gave up."

The wall stopped his retreat. Vlad knew he could just phase through but... He didn't want to know if she could follow him. "And now that your eyes are open, what now?" he asked.

Maddie smiled when she realized he wasn't going to try to escape through the wall. He was trapped... "Now that I can see, what's to stop me from taking what I want? What I hunger for?"

He could smell her. She smelled starved, hungry, like acid. She was stalking him like a predator stalking prey. Yet he couldn't bring himself to do more than flinch as dull black gloves pressed against his chest and slid over his shoulders to wrap around him. She pressed against him and licked her lips.

"No," he whispered. "This isn't you. Please, Maddie, not like this..." Soft lips reduced his protests to a long, needy groan. His hands found her waist and tried to push her away. Instead they slid around her, crushing her form to his in a way he'd never thought he'd feel outside of fantasies. Lips parted and she tasted like nothing he'd imagined, like hunger, like fulfillment, like _lust..._

The sound of his cane clattering to the floor distracted Vlad from a carnal red hunger. He pulled away from her and gasped. She was...

She was beautiful. The gaunt lines of her face were gone, replaced by an ever-pleasant softness. He ran his hands up and down her figure, marveling at the curves he found there. The acid was gone from her scent, leaving nothing but the natural perfume of the woman he loved but never thought he could have. Only her eyes betrayed a cold hunger. That coldness slowly tried to draw him back to reality.

She smirked and drew her hands over his chest to pluck at the buttons of his jacket. She pulled his ascot out of its knot and slid her hands over his white silk shirt.

"I-I can't," he whispered. He grasped for something, anything to convince himself that this was a bad idea. "I'll hurt you."

Maddie trailed a hand down the sleeve of his jacket to where he gripped her hip. She pulled his hand off of her and entwined their fingers. Ozone stung their nostrils as sparks arced across his hand to dance along her shiny black glove. "No you won't," she promised. "Not anymore."

A whine from his own throat was all the warning Vlad got before he crushed her to him and buried his face in her hair. A dam broke somewhere and he trailed desperate kisses along her throat back to her mouth as his hands roamed all over her, stroking and caressing. Tongues battled for dominance as the lights flickered and hands grasped at clothing to try to rip it off.

She pulled away and looked at Vlad with hooded, calculating eyes. He didn't care at this point, his own eyes shone red with hunger and his core was starting to flare. She kissed sweetly down his neck as her hands deftly unbuttoned his shirt and pushed it away from his shoulders. She pressed a messy kiss to the juncture between neck and shoulder, tasting the skin. She wanted more. His hunger was delicious and she wanted to keep it with her always.

She bit down, tasting blood. It wasn't enough. She bit harder, pulling, tearing at his flesh. She wanted, needed, **hungered** to know what he tasted like...

Vlad arched into her and held her close as he screamed. The world seemed to fade as nothing mattered but the woman in his arms and what she was doing to him. With a wrenching tear she pulled away. He blinked lazily, drunk with sensation, as she appeared to be savoring... something he did **not** want to think about. He had the most absurd urge to lean his head back and let her continue, let her consume him so thoroughly they would never be apart, would never be separate again.

His stomach lurched in disgust. Not at her actions, disturbing though they were. No, he was most disgusted with his own reaction. Electricity flared all around them, frizzing her hair and dancing on her skin. His hands held her in a bruising grip. And when she bent her head again to lick at the blood and bite down on his flesh he only moaned and offered his neck, a silent plea for her to finish him. He had to break out of this...

_No you don't._

I have to...

_Stay with her. Feed her your hunger..._

Vlad pulled his hands away from her _luscious voluptuous _hips and brought them to her _round firm_ chest. "I don't want to do this," he whispered before gathering energy and blasting her away from him with a bolt of ectoplasm.

Maddie flew across the lab, landing against a lab bench. The imprint bounced over and wrapped itself around her, taking away the pain of bumps and bruises. It looked over at the half ghost as he slid down the wall, eyes drifting shut and limbs twitching with unshackled power.

_Take him. More of him. All of him..._

She got back to her feet and licked her lips as she stalked toward him. She stopped as the lab door was kicked open by an enthusiastic foot.

Jack Fenton ran down the stairs, the Fenton Bazooka cocked on his shoulder. He landed on the floor of the lab with a triumphant flourish, quickly surveyed the situation, and turned his weapon on what he perceived to be the greatest threat in the room.

Vlad dragged enough of himself back to reality to realize he was looking at Jack over the barrel of a very large gun. "Tell me, Jack, does Madeline normally greet people in her lab by trying to consume them?"

Jack looked at the scene again. Vlad was the threat, he was the traitor. He was also bleeding red and... pink? Yes, that was pink. Huh. Red and pink all over his neck and soaking into his clothes which were only half on. Maddie was pretty and nice and why was that disgusting green blobby ghost wrapped around her? Her eyes were red again, she wasn't possessed, was she? No, that couldn't be it, she was too strong to be possessed. But then...

But then why was she covered in that same red and pink blood? It was on her hands, down the front of her jumpsuit, all over her neck and her face and...

Jack didn't even notice as Danny floated behind him and gently shifted the bazooka's aim away from Vlad.

"Dad, there's something wrong with Mom," Danny whispered.

Jack looked over to see glowing green eyes wide with fear. They looked to him for guidance, a silent plea for him to make this all make sense. To fix it.

The imprint raised itself behind Maddie in a possessive gesture. She gave it a look and a gesture to quell it before noticing the blood on her hands. A spike of hunger stabbed through her middle, driving her to bring her fingers to her lips. She licked the blood off, a satisfied moan spilling from her lips. "You taste good, Vlad..."

Any hope that this was somehow not what it looked like shattered in Jack's mind as Maddie lunged for Vlad with an inhuman speed. She gripped his shirt and dragged him off the floor. She ignored his frantic hands clawing at her as she yanked Vlad forward and sank her teeth into his shoulder. An inhuman scream tore from his throat.

Jack raised the bazooka and fired. The blast hit both Vlad and Maddie, throwing them into the wall of the lab.

The world stopped. Jack's grip on the bazooka went lax and it dropped to the floor. That didn't matter now. All that mattered was the fact that he'd just shot the love of his life. He didn't care that she was obviously possessed. He didn't care about Vlad or Danny or even that green blob that looked on like it was just as shocked as he was.

The world started up again as the imprint moved. Jack moved as well, both of them trying to get to the same goal. Maddie pulled herself to a sitting position against the wall, her jumpsuit torn after having taken the brunt of the blast. The imprint got to her first, its soothing touch gliding along the rents in her suit. Trails of slimy ectoplasm shimmered where its tendrils had been, trails that acted like aloe on a burn.

Jack stopped as she wrapped her arms around the thing. Disgust filled his features as he pulled a small-caliber ectogun from his belt. He aimed it right at the imprint's misshapen head. "Maddie, get away from that thing," he warned.

Maddie glared at her husband and turned away from him, shielding the imprint with her body.

"Maddie, please..." Jack growled.

Danny watched the stalemate. He had no idea what to do, what he even could do. His mother wasn't overshadowed, she was **possessed. **He couldn't recall ever facing something of this magnitude before. A soft groan called to his psyche, gave him something to do.

Vlad looked like hell. The half of his body that had been shot looked burned like he'd been left in the sun for days on end. The bite wounds appeared to have singed along the edges. Blood was everywhere and his one red eye was dull and dim. Danny at least could understand this. He started summoning his ice powers to cool burned flesh.

"Jack, if you do that she will hate you forever," Vlad said. His voice was scratchy as his throat was torn from screaming, but it was there.

"What am I supposed to do?" Jack demanded. His aim wavered for a moment before he tightened his grip and it stabilized. "Tell me how to save her and I will do exactly that."

"Then stand there," Vlad purred. It sounded more like the hiss of a lizard but it still had the desired effect.

"I'm so hungry," Maddie said. "You have no idea what this feels like. None of you could."

Vlad looked at her and gave her a sad smile. "On the contrary, my dear," he said. "I'm one of the few who can."

"You're a... **halfa**." She spat the word out like it was a particularly vile curse. "You never found yourself like this. It's always been there for you. You're inhabited by your own ghost! You've never had to hear the voice of another in your mind, telling you truths you never thought possible."

"There's more than one way to make a half ghost," Vlad whispered. "Your son may very well be inhabited by his own ghost. I am not. I was forced to lay on the coroner's slab for hours on end, trapped in my own mind, a long term possession contract dangled in front of me while I slowly broke down and went insane. When I finally gave in it was to the feel of the undertaker's knife.

"It's too late for me, my dear," he continued. "It has been for twenty years now. But it's not too late for you. Regardless of what it might tell you or how strongly you hunger, it's not too late. You don't have to do this. You don't have to leave everything you know behind. Because it will make you leave everything."

"No it won't," she insisted. "There's a way I can bring them with me. Keep them always."

"The same way you just tried to keep me?"

Maddie opened her mouth to refute him but the words didn't come. She glanced back and forth between Vlad, the imprint, Jack, Danny... "You didn't lose everything," she said.

"I lost you," Vlad said. "I lost Jack. I lost my friends, my family, my freedom. I spent years alone, experimenting on myself as if understanding what had happened to me could somehow bring it all back. And when I found you again you were still lost to me. I lost everything important."

Her head hurt. She didn't know what to do...

_He lies. You hunger. I can give you all you hunger for. Knowledge, power, prestige... I can give you what your genius hungers for._

"I don't want to be alone," she whispered.

_You are never alone. We hunger..._

She looked around her. Jack hung onto every word, face filled with abject horror and maybe a little bit of guilt. Danny looked sad, subdued. Vlad looked almost serene despite the burns up and down his arm and chest that appeared to be coated in a thin film of ice. The lab was familiar, it was her domain. Her home, her lair. All of her post-university discoveries were made here. The ghost portal, her first ghost dissection, her first successful weapons test... She looked at the imprint in her arms, the gaunt man that no one else could see.

"I don't want to be alone," she said again.

"And you will never be alone," the imprint said. "You'll have me. Always."

"Mom..."

For a moment Danny wasn't sure he'd spoken. That moment faded once he realized everyone was looking expectantly at him. He tried to give voice to his thoughts. "We can't go with you," he said. "Dad and Jazz can't, they're alive. I can't, I have my whole life to lead. I have to protect the town. And Vlad can't go either, he has to stay here. If you really want to go I won't stop you and I don't think anyone else really can. But you will be alone. Alone with that imprint. Forever."

Forever...

Maddie closed her eyes and held the imprint close. Green pseudopods wrapped around her lovingly as the gaunt man held her in his arms and whispered sweet nothings in her ear. But they weren't seductive anymore. They were the wet, babbling sounds of bubbles blown out of ectoplasm.

She grabbed the ectogun out of Jack's hand as she shot to her feet. Her sudden movement took the imprint by surprise. She had the pistol leveled at it before it could envelop her again. Blank red eyes flashed with indignant anger before it turned on her, tendrils whipping out to grasp her around the neck. Two shots fired through its bulk splattered green ectoplasm across the laboratory.

"Maddie!" Jack cried. He wrapped his arms around her and lifted her into the air in an enthusiastic hug.

Vlad sighed in relief before hissing in pain as Danny threw his arms around the elder halfa's bitten neck. Sparks arced out to shock the boy for his insolence.

Danny backed off, grinning. His mother was okay, Vlad was going to be okay, the imprint was...

Wait... "Uh, guys?" he said. "Mom? Dad?" He pointed out what he saw.

Maddie looked at her son then followed his gesture. Green streaks of ectoplasm were coalescing into a small blob with blank red eyes. It looked at her with indignant hurt written across its features. And... Triumph...

A mighty need struck Maddie, a gnawing agony in her middle as it felt like a gaping hole opened up where her digestive organs used to be.

_You are MINE!_

Maddie tore herself out of Jack's arms and stormed over to the blob. She shoved a hand into its mouth to grab it by its tongue. It crawled up its tongue to engulf her hand. She closed her eyes and sighed at the feeling. The pain faded into a beautiful serenity as its voice echoed in her head.

_You will always be mine, Madeline. Now, later, it doesn't matter. You will always hunger. I am patient._

It's threat broke her out of her reverie and she flung the imprint directly at the half-open ghost portal. It splashed against the event horizon, disappearing into the Ghost Zone.

Jack ran over and activated the lock. The portal doors slid shut with a sense of finality.

Maddie sighed in exhaustion. Jack ran out and caught her before she could fall. "It's over," he said. "It's gone."

She couldn't look at him.

-00000-

"OW! That **hurt!**"

"Oh stop your whining! It's not that tight!"

"Let go of me you imbecile! Did no one ever teach you tourniquets don't go around the neck?"

Even though the lab was better, safer, equipped, and could be at least somewhat sterilized Jack was still trying to wrap Vlad's bite wounds in the kitchen. Maddie and Danny were providing running commentary, useful distraction, and in general trying to stay out of the way.

Jack had had about enough. He thrust all of the bandages into Danny's hands and sat down to sulk. Vlad stayed seated on the kitchen table, arms crossed over his bare chest in a pout. Danny sighed and floated up to get a better angle.

"You probably have more experience than six months of boy scouts," Vlad admitted.

Danny shrugged. "Ghost fighting is hard," he allowed. "You end up getting shot a lot." He laid the bandage over the material that packed the wound and started to wrap.

Jack sulked even more when he saw Vlad was actually sitting still and wasn't mocking Danny mercilessly. And Danny wasn't any better at this than he was, was he? Nah, couldn't be. Jack decided to poke at Danny's wrapping job but got his hand slapped for it. Hmmph. Fine. Saaaay... "Hey Danny..."

Danny made a noncommittal noise and readied to slap his dad's hand away again if need be.

"Try wrapping all the way down the arm," Jack suggested. "And then down the other arm and over his head and his chest..."

"I am not a mummy," Vlad growled.

"Yeah but mummies are undead, right?"

Vlad and Danny both glared at Jack for that.

"So anyway, is it over, do you think?" Danny asked.

"Absolutely," Jack said.

No," Vlad said.

"Wait, what? Of course it is! Tell him, Maddie, tell him it's over."

Maddie looked at her husband and bowed her head.

Vlad reached down with his good arm and stroked his hand across her cheek. She looked up at him, a silent plea in her eyes. He looked into her eyes, her beautiful violet eyes. "It's not over yet," he said. "But it will end. If you let it then over time the connection will fade. Eventually it will disappear."

"And how do I do that?" she asked.

Vlad smiled. "Indulgence, my dear," he said. "Indulge the connection and it will grow. Starve it and it will die. If you can avoid overfeeding your hungers they will fade and with it any hold the imprint may hold over you in this life or the next."

"How do you know?" Danny asked.

"I've seen your grades, Daniel, so I know this will sound like a foreign concept to you." Vlad let his hand fall from Maddie's cheek to hold Danny still for optimal mocking. "I studied."

Danny growled as Vlad leered. That leer turned to pained shock as Danny slapped him on the back, right over the bazooka burn. Vlad snarled and collected a pink charge of ectoplasm.

Jack and Maddie exited to the living room as the kitchen turned into the grounds for a fairly quiet battle. Jack pulled her close and looked into her eyes, soft loving violet eyes that still shone red when the light hit them just the wrong way. "Please tell me it's over," he begged.

Maddie snuggled up to him and tried to ignore the hunger in her belly. Instead she basked in the warmth radiating from his broad bulk. "It will end," she promised. "I can't tell you it's over now but it will end."

"You'll tell me when it's over?" he asked.

"I will."

Jack snuggled his wife and nuzzled his nose in her hair. She still didn't quite smell like Maddie yet but it was coming back. He was going to get her back...

Until then, well, he wasn't sure he was comfortable with letting her bury her face in his neck. Not with those teeth...

-00000-

Before you start gathering things to throw at me... This isn't quite the end yet. There's an epilogue still to come.


	17. Epilogue

This one took some time. I've been distracted. Those who poke around my deviantart account might see why. There are scenes there from after Vlad's accident. There's a (creepy semi-real) scene there set between last chapter and this epilogue. And I've been immersed in the Through Danny Phantom project. I swear, one good challenge and I'm churning out fics right and left. Just... not this one.

There's more planned for this AU. About half of the Through Danny Phantom fics I write fit into this AU, filling in some of the holes between canon and story. Many of the bits I write I feel no one would be interested in so they get put onto deviantart. There's even some hentacle porn that I wrote on a bet that fits into this AU, go find it on deviantart or Y!Gallery under the same name I use here.

Anyway, here's the epilogue. It took me two months to write this. That fact feels wrong somehow.

This chapter is rated T for innuendos, gross food, and a reference made of religious backlash.

-00000-

As Satan may use scripture for his own purposes so too can the Denizens of Hell lend their strength to save the world if it furthers their own evil gains. The lack of Holy Presence within that realm proves the true nature of the Ghost Zone and its inhabitants. This Ghost Zone is none other than the Realm of Hell and its inhabitants are the Damned.

It is henceforth Mortal Sin to willfully open or maintain a portal to Hell. Its denizens cannot be Saved and therefore must not be contacted, harbored, or studied by any member of the Faith whether he be Priest or layperson. Any such creature that declares itself a Master of ghosts is a Demon of the Pit. Unwillful contact with the Damned is Venial Sin and may be Forgiven with Confession. Willful contact with the Damned and falling prey to Possession is Mortal Sin.

-Papal Doctrine issued August 2007

-00000-

_October 2007_

Halloween was approaching and Vlad Masters wasn't entirely sure what to do. The events of this past year left him mentally and emotionally exhausted enough to honestly consider throwing himself a funeral. Take a few weeks off, be lulled to sleep by the sound of the gravedigger's shovel, wake up surrounded by the softest red satin six feet under while the insects burrowed through the wood...

He sighed wistfully. But no, he didn't have time for that. Here he was, stuck behind the mayor's desk for three more years. In addition he had companies to run and a multitude of shareholders still angry about the severe losses VladCo soaked during the entire disasteroid incident. On top of it all it was football season and no matter how tired he felt he wasn't going to miss a Packer's game just because he was taking a dirt nap.

What he wouldn't give for a good thunderstorm.

Vlad leaned back in his chair and absently rubbed at his shoulder, a habit he picked up after Maddie tried to eat him.

_Maddie..._

He hadn't seen her since that day. At first avoiding the Fenton household was difficult, especially after reconnaissance told him Jack was having trouble trusting her at night. It would have been so easy to swoop in and offer comfort but, well... He told himself it would ruin the chase. A more pressing reason might have been the fact that he trusted her as little as Jack did right now. Rare was the individual, ghost or human, who was willing to sleep next to a woman who might end up turning cannibal in her dreams.

And yet... Perhaps seeing her might assuage some of his concerns.

At least that's what he told himself as he clocked out early, completely blowing off both public and private obligations. So VladCo shareholders had found out that he held the world for ransom in order to offset the costs soaked by his companies during the whole saving-the-world fiasco. So his desk was covered in petitions with a certain Ms. Manson's stench all over them demanding unreasonable changes to the way he ran this city. So Congress was trying to revoke some of his more lucrative patents because of loopholes involving prior art. So he'd had to relocate his main Dalv facility to Malaysia to avoid another GIW raid as for some strange reason the US government was suddenly interested in enforcing their laws against human cloning.

So what? None of it mattered right now. Right now Vlad loped over to the sleek black machine, running his hand over her smooth flanks, her shiny coat, the soft curves of her beautiful body. He sank into soft leather, running long fingers over black wood and red copper accents. A long sigh flowed out of him as he brought her to life. She snarled before settling into a gentle purr that sent shivers up and down his body.

He needed to find something sufficiently decadent to reward Technus for fixing his car.

-00000-

Danny flew home from school, using height and speed to avoid the random roving weirdos that stalked his walking route. It was a weird happening, this influx of ghost hunters and important-looking priests. They always seemed to be following him for some reason. One time a priest even threw a vial of water at him and started chanting things in some strange language.

He should probably talk to Vlad about it. He hadn't seen the man since his mom was exorcized. Life was getting boring without evil plans to thwart and he still felt he needed an excuse to go invade the elder halfa's time.

Hey, speak of the devil. Danny saw the shiny black car tucked in the driveway, tire marks suggesting some fruitloop had taken the corner at high speed and drifted into the parking space. He flew down, landing without a sound on the front porch before turning human and phasing through the front door. He headed for the kitchen.

"Hi Dad," Danny said before rummaging in the fridge. He found a block of cheese in the back, its surface growing fuzzy green and white. Danny thought about it before grabbing the bread, the fuzzy cheese, and some leftover hot dogs. He started making an epic sandwich, first cutting off the heads of the semi-mobile hot dogs before tossing them in the microwave. He sliced the mold off of the cheese, contemplating it. Something told him to try it, just one bite...

Oh wow that was **good**... Danny cut off all the mold from the cheese and put it on his sandwich. The headless living hot dogs, some moldy cheese, a big squirt of ketchup, he had the perfect sandwich. He plopped down at the table across from his father and was eating before he realized the disturbed, disgusted, thoroughly _fascinated_ look his dad was giving him.

"I saw Vlad's here," Danny said, mouth full. He swallowed and wiped his face with the back of a hand.

Jack nodded, too busy observing his son. He held a crumbing sandwich filled with strange, obnoxious food-_like_ things in one hand. Ketchup and hot dog juices dripped down his arm to his elbow. His mouth was smeared with crumbs and smudges as he ignored the napkin right next to him, instead wiping his face with his bare hand. His plate was forgotten on the counter, drips and crumbs littering the table as he demolished the sandwich with all the grace of a shark tearing up a seal. If one ignored what was in that sandwich then Danny... looked just like any other normal teenager.

"He's in the lab," Jack said, gesturing to the open lab door. "Your mother's down there."

Danny swallowed loudly before going still. "Is she okay?" he asked.

"You know her," Jack admitted. "She doesn't want to be left alone down there anymore but once she gets working on something she won't quit."

"And what's she working on now?"

"A paper. She wants to publish something on imprints and the danger they cause. Or something like that. I still say Vlad shoulda let me rip that thing apart molecule by molecule."

Danny went quiet. He took a bite of sandwich, chewing thoughtfully. He could hear Vlad and Maddie downstairs, their voices drifting up the stairwell.

"You just had to publish first, didn't you?" Maddie snapped. "Didn't you! Ugh, you _always_ had to be the first!"

"If by 'first' you mean fifteen years ago then yes!" Vlad defended.

"This doesn't sound good," Jack admitted.

"Should I... you know... get the muzzle?" Danny asked.

Jack opened his mouth to say something when a white blur distracted him. Plasmius paused in the kitchen, his staff missing and evil glee painting his face. He glanced around, his red eyes flashing with something like triumph as they lingered on Danny. It was a rather long pause considering the pounding feet that bounded their way up the stairs to storm into the kitchen wielding a rolled up journal in one hand. Vlad gave an exaggerated look of fear before shooting off out the front door.

Maddie growled and shoved her hand down the back of Jack's jumpsuit. She ignored his squirming and shocked sounds as she groped around for the biggest ectogun she could find. She pulled out a large two-handed model before running right after Vlad.

Vlad lifted easily into the air, watching the door so as to not be taken by surprise. He grinned with anticipation as Maddie vaulted down the steps and hit the sidewalk running. The first few blasts did nothing to wipe that grin from his face, instead egging him on toward a demented giggle.

Maddie snarled at her prey and his inability to take this seriously. She aimed carefully and fired, hitting him square in the back.

Vlad careened out of the sky, guiding his descent directly at a conveniently placed group of bystanders. He dove right into one of them.

People jumped away from the overshadowed in their midst. Red eyes glowed as they took full control of the body provided. It was a strange sight, some grungy-looking skater kid standing straight and regal. "Nothing to see here," Vlad said in his best mayoral voice. "Move along."

The whine of an ectogun charging was what finally dispersed the crowd. Vlad looked over the business end of her rather large piece into the red-ringed violet eyes of the woman wielding it. "It's been far too long since I've been properly chased, my dear," Vlad purred. He gave her a look that might have been seductive if he wasn't currently wearing the body of a high school teenager.

Maddie growled and cocked the gun.

"Capture me if you can," Vlad purred before leaving the kid's body, shooting off into the sky with a crackle of electricity.

The teenager shook his head to clear the cobwebs before realizing he was currently looking at a very **big** gun. He screamed and ran.

Maddie pointed her ectogun upwards, carefully tracing her quarry. She fired but he dodged at the last minute, toying with her. Toying or not she wasn't going to take this lying down. She ran down the street after her prey, firing whenever she could get a good shot.

If Vlad wanted to taunt her about being chased then she was gonna chase him. Even if he was enjoying it far too much.

-00000-

Jack and Danny watched from the porch. The rolled up journal laid abandoned on the steps. Danny picked it up as he and Jack watched Vlad swooping around, angry shots from Maddie's ectogun singeing the air right behind him.

Jack couldn't help it. He burst out laughing. Oh, this was too weird. Too funky. And altogether normal. Sure they were traitors. They weren't human anymore. But he could accept that. Danny was still his son. Vlad was... okay, Vlad still hated him and Jack wasn't too keen in return. Maddie had her bad days but she was slowly returning to normal.

He could accept it. He was proud of Danny. Proud of what he's done for the town, the world, their family, even their enemies. He was a good kid and nothing was going to change that. Not even turning half ghost.

He clapped a beefy hand on Danny's shoulder and pulled him close as they watched Maddie chase the insane fruitloop through the skies.

End


End file.
